Читать книгу The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church онлайн

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“Resolved, 1. That all our preachers ought prudently to enforce upon our members the necessity of teaching their slaves to read the Word of God; and also that they give them time to hear the Word of God preached on our regular days of divine service.

“Resolved, 2. That our colored preachers and official members have all the privileges in the district and quarterly-meeting conferences which the usages of the country, in different sections, will justify: Provided, also, that the presiding elder may, when there is a sufficient number, hold for them a separate district conference.

“Resolved, 3. That any of the annual conferences may employ colored preachers to travel where they judge their services necessary: Provided, they be recommended according to the form of Discipline.

“Resolved, 4. That the above resolutions be made a part of the section in the Discipline on slavery.”

MORGAN COLLEGE, BALTIMORE, MD.

Since nothing aside from the action already taken by the Church on this subject was done until the year 1836, when the General Conference met for its twelfth session in Cincinnati, Ohio, we pass from the General Conference of 1824 to the General Conference of 1836. The agitation of this question went steadily on, however, and the Abolitionists kept it warm. From Maine to Louisiana, from Canada to Florida, it was being agitated. Since so much was said concerning the question at that General Conference, some of which, if not retrogression, was akin to it, we give the following resolutions. In reading the same, and judging them, we must remember that the seeming opposition to Abolitionism was attributable, in a measure, to the aversion to politics; that the tide of agitation was even then so high that the strongest of strong men trembled; that the Church had time and again put itself on record as to the question at issue. Though it, for the time being, condemned the action of the two “lecturing delegates,” it never once relaxed its grip upon the throat of slavery, nor assayed to compromise a single principle of right. So far removed from the scenes that greeted the General Conference that year in Cincinnati, and remembering how thoughtless some advocates of measures can sometimes be or appear, and how easily a zeal without knowledge can injure a good cause, we do not wonder at the action taken in the case of those two brethren. But when the enemies of human liberty construed the condemnation of the action of those two brethren by the General Conference as a weakening by the Church on the question of slavery, the ensuing General Conference disabused their minds of their error, and sent the enemies of liberty to grass again.