Morning journal and courier., 1882-09-11
Sunrnal anO Courier.
Monday Morning, Sept. II. 1882.
Despair.
Sermon by Rev. Arthur J. Chambers, Pastor of the A. M. E. Bethel Church.

1 Sermon by Rev. Arthur J. Chambers l
 Pastor of the A. M. E. Bethel Church.
 Rev. Arthur J. Chambers, pastor of the A. M. E. Bethel church, preached an able dis course in the Masonic Hall on Webster street afternoon. The preacher selected Despair as his subject and based his re- marks on the words found in Job, second 1 chapter, ninth verse: ''Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die.' After brief introductory remarkr the preacher pro- ceeded as follows
 How long will the colored men of this na- tion continue to struggle for place among 1 the wisest and best of their fellow country 1 men if their efforts spurned and they are l treated with contumely? How long shall they l retain the lofty aspirations of noble manhood i in defiance of the impIacable antagonism | which hedges every avenue to greatness and renown? When shall the fortitude and faith | that sustained them in the melancholy years of yore give way to desperation and despair What stand shall they take in the near future upon the burning questions of the internal policy of the republic The momentus prob- 1 Iems of state may ,and in many instances must, be solved by them Will they join hands with the swelling ranks of socialism and make common cause with vice and intemper- ance? Will they become discouraged and abandon all hope that their native land will deal justly by them and unite with the army of vagabonds and mendicants, whose num- bers are increasing far too rapidly for the good of society? They read their past history with shuddering emotions. The present is not inauspicious, but it as sanguine friends and superficial observers imagine, nor such are vouchsafed to the oppressed of other lands. I beg an audience of the white men of New England while state few excruciating facts, not in an arro- gant or sullen mood, nor for the purpose of causing passion to leap the summit of reason,
 but simply to arouse sentiment on very
 grave issues. Of all sounds ever heard that
 of an agcnized soul is the most sublinlely
 pathetic and enchantingly doleful Man has
 gazed unmoved into the mouth of the howl ing tempest and felt delightful sensations while the crashing bolt hurled desolation adown the craggy cliffs he has listened, ab- stractedly, to the enervatlng strains of balmy zephyrs that chant soothing anthems amid the foliage of the forest, and had the muse of poetry and romance to felicitate his musings while he listened to the murmuring sea. But when the plaintiye vail and bitter anguish from 0 crushed and mangled soul pierced the silence, intutively his imperious nature owned Q conqueror and spontaneously prof fered friend. Thus it ever has been and thus it ey.r shall be. With such cry of grief would I plead the cause of my long oppressed and outraged race from a pull pit on these ancient and illustrious hills We are nominally free. The essence of liberty is social, industrial and religious equality. We
 have never tasted it. Emancipation pushes us half across the borders of the Eden of hu- man development. The every day experience of each of us emphasizes an existence of the other half in the flames of hell of uncom- promising prescription and race antipathy, while the purgatory of alternate hope and despair indicates the dividing line. We are half consumed by the fires of lofty ambition and half frozen by the studied hostility and opposition of the ruling race. Quickened by trump of progress we awoke to find fetters on every limb moral, material mental chains lacerating and torturing to men who witness the sweep of untrammeled thought all around them. ''Where ignorance is bliss 'twere folly to be wise." We are more sensible of our onerous status to day, being more enlightened than in other years when less informed We hold no secret conclaves to discuss measures for our profit. Yet are cognizant of isolation and the anomaly of society in a society, or two civilizations and distinct man hoods upon the same soil. And we kno it is not for country's highest interest that it should remain thus. WiIberforce, in order to arouse England to action on the slave ques- tion in the West Indies, declared his purpose to have her look into that nest of snakes. Let New England behold den of horrors no less narrowing to men of minds and aspira- tions She was first to sound the alarm against oppression; she was first to hail the dawn of freedoms day; she was the first to marshal forces for God and ths right. She has sprung into life race of millions Young, strong in resolution, athletic in pur- pose, bouyant in expectation, never were l men more humbly and meekly determined to conquer success than the colored men of America, and New England has fired that 1 magazine of towering yet aoly ambition. She whispered to the slave and sung of my riads of advantages of freedom and the DOS. abilities of liberty. She has poured out floods of wealth in furtherance of human de- velopment among our brothers of the South Distance seems to lend entertainment to the view in more respects than one, for the colored men of New England have far less opportunity to advance in the essen- tials of greatness than in any other section of | our country. There is but little choice for ! us here between contempt on account of con- dition and disappointment when we seek to improve our condition. It is fatal error to ! cry about rights we have the right to be born and the right to die. Frederick Douglass said to Bishop Brown and me last spring that he believed in standing on the
 
 ! had just a moment previous consented to be one of delegation of colored men to wait upon the President and request his good offices in bringing to just punishment the rnfian who had stood our venerable l Bishop Payne on the side of railroad track l for assuming to stand on his citizenship. We have never produced a Titus Oates or a Bene- 1 dict Arnold. We have no Ingersolls or Hux l leys. Yet are we the sport of prescription | and the blunt of rldlcule; we are the jest of society and the bugbear, of the church. and 8 veritable millstone about the neck of the na- | tion. Don't realize that we are regarded as social excrescence, a disease and a species of plague?
 We are men, not opulent, not learned and l not potential, but men of heart, men of mind and men of muscle The friend of l tho State, of the church, of society. 'Tis l true that worthy city attorney said in his l excellent address to this church some weeks 1 since that there was by far too large per-
 centage of colored men before the city court charged with drunkenness The won 1 der IS that more of us are not drunkards l Yet we, as 8 race, are anxious to emulate the 1 wisest and best in American life. And 1 warn society, the mean of means, against the
 danger of neglecting to tone the morals of
 my race Do not let the grim fortress that l marks the line between the races destroy this fair land of ours Are we not entitled to
 better treatment than we are receiving in | New England /? Can't colored men fill none
 but the most menial stations among the l laboring classes2 Are our mothers, wives
 and daughters to be worked more pitilessly
 than in the days of slavery? Will you not
 help us build a church unless you are the GUS.
 todians of the eproperty Will our schools and
 publishing houses be ignored when you write
 your wills? Are we to feel like an incubus
 upon the body polite instead of an integral
 part thereof? Tell us not of Douglass, a
 Langston or Bruce. Three planets will not l illumine nights. Our masses must and shall
 rise. They are holding on to their integrity;
 amid the fercest fires they have stood and
 now they abide their time. They have too
 much sense to turn from God in days of trib
 ulation or forsake his statues in time of trou-
 ble. They will not curse God their father
 and friend, nor will they die to the compan-
 ionship of the good of earth. Where are
 men, grand and glorious men, wrapped in
 mantels of cherished philanthropy, who
 have written their names upon the hearts of
 the millions of our race in this land, and en-
 blazoned them upon the monuments of the ! everlasting ages: men whose deeds bov va