Читать книгу The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church онлайн

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Peter was astonished when he was sent to the Gentiles. He was more so when he saw them receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and heard them declare the wonderful things of God. But he recognized them as brethren; and when his people at Jerusalem call him to account for his conduct in going among the Gentiles, he gives the history of the event, and sums it all up in these words: “Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I that I could withstand God?” This settled the question for Peter, that the Gentiles were entitled to all the rights and blessings of the Jew, as followers of Christ. If God honored the blacks with his Spirit’s presence, filling them with joy and peace, enabling them to show forth the power of a Christian life in the fruits of holy living; if he anointed more than one black Harry “to preach good tidings unto the meek, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” and honored their ministry in awakening and saving souls, is it a matter of wonder that there should be the conviction in the minds of Methodists that these slaves are men like ourselves? If men, then they are our neighbors; if our neighbors, then we must love them as ourselves. If we love them as men—as ourselves—then slavery, as it exists here, is wrong. The enlightened conscience of the Methodists said, “Slavery is wrong;” and this conviction was soon embodied in the question, which found its way into the Church law, and held its place there till it received its formal, practical answer in emancipation, “What shall be done for the extirpation of the evil of slavery?”