The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-03-12
The old Love.

New Orleans Times s-Democrat.
 There is grief in the soul of pr.
 Daniel Kumler Flickinger of Hunting ] ton, Ind, member of the United Breth-
 ren of Christ, and sometime mission ary of his sect in West Africa. A pro- tege of his, brought when a child from Africa, reared under Christian influ- ences, educated as minister, and re- heather has, after twenty-five years of service as a missionary. forsworn Chris tianity and accepted the honorable po- sition of chief of his old tribe of na- tive devil worshipers. The dispatch, printed in today's paper, conveying the
 news of this shattering of high hopes ! adds that the apostate has also con tracted plural marriages In the wilds of Africa. And all this in spite of the fact that he bore the name of his ben efactor and spiritual guide and also | that of the great English opponent of slavery, being called by the elect Daniel Flickinger Wilberforce.
 We should like to administer com | fort to the troubled spirit of pr. Flick | finger of Huntington, Ind, but truth
 makes us confess that we think the
 moving the native from Africa and pi- ously filling him with nurture and ad- monition, 1t was the height of folly to
 expose him to temptation by sending | he was deceived, as many of our North | ern friends are too often deceived. as Ioutward signs, forgetting that the flores of being are not refined so cas- l ily as the mere gloss of civilization Is | assumed. Daniel Flickinger Wilber- force was doubtless as fair an outside of a man as one would find in a two days journey among our negro popula- tjon. His protector, of course, fondly ! believed that his black skin was all | that differentiated him from himself, l that his soul was attuned to the truths of the new religion, and he was going l to do a great work in his native land. 1 Rut once parted from the tonic infiu- ence of the white race, the restraint and example of the white mans civiliza- | tion, his true nature reasserted itself, and the call of the once worshiped fetiches was not in vain. Growth from within there was apparently none. EV-
 erything was given from without, and | the coarser flores of the convert were, as a consequence, absolutely unchang- ed.
 | The case possesses a real signifi-
 canoe. for 1t exempliies what might be expected to happen on large scale if the negroes of America were with drawn from the influence of contact with the white race-the only thing
 that keeps them up to the low level of lcivilization they now enjoy. Behind the black, no matter how far removed. lies Africa" and behind him only a few generations removed lies very close his race. The veneer acquired, and | which misguided humanitartans take for evidence of inward growth and new born capacity to measure up to Ihigh standards, would be very quickly lost by the vast mass of them under the circumstances that brought about the falling away of the Rev. Wilber- force. Indeed, from the religious Wor- ship of several millions of them to the baser forms of primitive religion Is but step. That final step will not be taken, of course, as long as the wor-
 ship of the white race remains as an an
 example for imitation; but let us noI be deceived into imagining that any iinward spiritual impulse of their own or anything save the example or tne Iwhite race keeps them, as a.whole, even
 in their present state