Читать книгу The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church онлайн

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But Rev. Richard Allen capitulated. Is capitulation on the part of a general attacked an exhibition of leadership or prowess? General Sigel, in the late war, became famous at it; but only among a certain class of soldiers. When it is remembered that our African brethren were in such a fort as St. George’s, the capitulation seems to take on the air of cowardice. Instead of that Church being a monument and outgrowth of a desire of our white members to drive the black ones out, it is just the opposite—the outgrowth of an effort to keep them within our communion. Mr. Allen, after reciting his action in the premises, relates what followed. One conversant with the polity of our Church, after knowing what had gone before, can shut his eyes and tell what followed, especially if the presiding elder, Dr. Roberts, and our pastor, then stationed at St. George’s Church, knew and dared do their duty. Notwithstanding this, as strange as it may appear, we hear from the lips of some ministers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church that their dear African brethren, members of St. George’s Church, “were pulled off their knees while at prayer in the church, because of their color;” nearly every young minister entering some of their conferences, ignorant of Methodist history, gives the above answer to the question, why he prefers that connection to all others. Of course, the tyro knows nothing to the contrary. It is known by every one conversant with our history, that even after the “Allenites,” as they were called, had gone out and erected a building for Church purposes, the presiding elder and pastor of St. George’s Church were willing to let them go on with their separate worship, not exercising, or desiring to exercise, a tithe as much authority over them as almost any one of their own presiding elders does over their Churches in this country to-day. The presiding elder, having an appointment to preach for them one Sabbath, was surprised to hear them exclaim as he walked up the aisle of their church that day, “Pray, brethren, pray; here comes the devil!” Such language as that in God’s house shows the animus that actuated that side of this question. With such a spirit actuating them, the matter could hardly have been settled otherwise than it was, or they had to remain under the supervision of our Church. The question has often been asked if Richard Allen was in the Church on the occasion when that outcry was made. The answer has been, time and again, that “he first began the cry.”