Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-11-09


dates applying for admission, or TO subject
candidates who come from special quarters
to inquisitorial examinations, or to dis
courage from application those who accept
in good faith the doctrines of Evangelical
Christianity as they are embodied in the
ecumenical creeds of Christendom, yet dis
sent from special and speculative dogmas
that are provincial in their character, the
difficulties which have environed the Board
will not have come to an end If, on the
contrary, the resolutions of the Board are
carried out in the spirit in which they
were framed and adopted; if any creed of
acknowledged weight in the Congrega-
tional denomination is accepted as rea-
sonably fair statement of the doc
trines held by the churches which sup
port the Board; if any further exami-
nations are conducted, not with view
to compel the candidate to add to
this creed, but with view to ascertaining
whether he understands it and honestly
holds it, and has the ability to defend it;
if the same policy is pursued in tie wider
field; If such men as Mr.. Gunsaulus, Drs.
j. I. Duryea, Washington GLADDEN., L. I.
Munger and Reuen Thomas, men OF piety,
eminence and leadership, are invited TO
the platform of the Board from which
they have been in the past apparently
carefully excluded if men of like spirit
and temper, laymen and clergymen, are
elected upon the Board to take part in its
counsels, and if, as vacancies occur in the
Prudential Committee, such men are
treated as not less acceptable than their
fellows of supposed more conservative
views; if, in short, the American Board is
administered in the spirit in which the
American Missionary Association and the
American Home Missionary Society are
administered, there is no reason why it
should not be characterized by the same
unity, no reason why its platform should
be the theme of debates, and no reason
whv its contributions should not be raised
in very short time to a million of dollars
a year."
The Christian Union says: "The Rev.
j. H. White, the General Statistical Sec
retary of the A. NJ. f. Zion Church, writes
letter to the New York Age criticising
and complaining of Prof Booker T. Wash
ington's recent article in the Christian
Union on the "Colored Ministry of the
South" and it intimates that the Christian
Union accepted and published the state
ment of Prof. Washington without inyes-
tigation. Mr.. White is mistaken. The
Christian Union had made somewhat care
full inquiry into the mental and moral con-
dition of the negro preachers of the South
before ii asked Prot. Booker I. Washing
ton to give its readers an. article on this
subject. 1t asked him for the article be-
cause it knew him as one familiar with the
facts, and preiudlced, if at all, in favor of
L I. IL not ,,,cl,paJ fo NOR,
the picture in any darker colors than it
deserved. All that he said respecting the
intellectual and moral condition of ma
jority of the colored preachers of the
South was more than confirmed by the
testimony of men thoroughly familiar
with the condition of the South. at the
Lake Mohonk Conference last June. The
facts are perfectly familiar to the residents
in the South and to missionaries and
teachers laboring there. There is, In
truth, no fact more lamented or
more lamentable in the condition OF the
South than this fact, that the pseudo-re-
ligious teachers of the colored people,
especially in the Black Belt, are blind
leaders of the blind in vast majority OF
cases deplorably ignorant, and in very
large proportion of cases deplorably i'm
moral. The Southern negroes need nothing
SO much as the substitution of an intelli-
gent and ethical religion in places of the
mere emotionalism which was the only re-
ligion, for the most part, which slavery
allowed them. The educational interests
of the South need nothing so much as the
establishment of courses of theological in
struction, chiefly in the English Bible, SO
arranged that that the negro preacher or
the graduate of the Normal School can
take the course without previous college
! training. Indeed, we have seen nothing
lately more discouraging to one who de-
sires to work for the education and eleya-
tion of the negroes in the far South than
this attempt, by the Statistical Secretary
of the principal negro church of the South,
) to make it appear that the negro preach
ers are not more ignorant or more immoral
than the white ministers of both North
and South"