Читать книгу The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church онлайн

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“Moved, That when any of our traveling preachers become owners of a slave or slaves by any means, they shall forfeit their ministerial character in the Methodist Episcopal Church, unless they execute, if it be practicable, a legal emancipation of such slave or slaves, agreeably to the laws of the State wherein they live. Agreed to.”

This motion was originally offered by Brother Timmons, and was conceived by the secretary to have been superseded in the progress of the business upon slavery. But the conference voted that they would act upon it, with the amendments, the same as a new motion.

It can be plainly seen by the foregoing report into what a strait the General Conference was brought by this question, as well as how earnestly and faithfully that General Conference strove to ascertain “the mind of the Holy Spirit” as to the question. Just think of the fact that in one day of that General Conference six different phases of this question were presented. Amid these were: (1) To prevent the separation of husband and wife; (2) To change a former rule that allowed a Methodist to buy a husband or wife when they belonged to separate parties, so as to prevent a separation. Even in this form the buying and selling of human beings was objected to strenuously. It was considered “doing evil, that good might come therefrom.”