1838-EMANCIPATION JUBILEE-1888 ADDRESSES I DELIVERED IN THE MORAVIAN CHAPELS ► IN DEMERARA, > BY Rev. H. MOORE and Mr. G. R. POTTER. On Wednesday, August i st, 1888, The Jubilee of the Emancipation of the Slaves in the British West Indies. 1838— EMANCIPATION JUBILEE-1888 ADDRESSES DELIVERED IN THE MORAVIAN CHAPELS DEMERARA, Rev. H. MOORE and Mr. G. R. POTTER, On Wednesday, August isf, 1888, The Jubilee of the Emancipation of the Slaves in the British West Indies. PREFACE. T'HE Addresses here presented to the public were delivered to large assemblies of the descendants of Africa in the two Moravian Chapels in Demerara — at Graham’s Hall, on Plantation Industry, and at Tabernacle, in Betervervvagting Village. The Addresses claim no special literary merit. As they were intended for persons of the labouring class, it was necessary that they should be characterised by simplicity. It is thought that the greatness of the transaction whose Jubilee the day commemorated, is a good reason for the endeavour to perpetuate them in printed form. Appended to the addresses are three of the hymns sung at the Jubilee services. It might be interesting to mention that, as well the hymns as the addresses, are the productions of descendants of the once enslaved race. CHRIST’S TRUTH: THE GREAT LIBERATOR. “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." — John viii. 30. W HAT a transaction, that of fifty years ago! What a day that, the i st of August, 1838, when emancipation in these British dominions of the West was consummated, and the last link of the shackles that bound 830,000 persons was torn off them, and they rose, and shouted, “We are free!” Thirty years before that, the slave trade between Africa and the British Colonies — the horrible slave trade — had been abolished. The history of the slave trade is the most heart-rending chapter in all the history of human avarice, and human villanies, and human woe. Looking over the whole two hundred years during which Africa’s children were in bondage in these countries we cannot help exclaiming, “ Oh, what a sum of violence, and cruelty, and woe ! ” And we, in this Jubilee time, stand up to bless the Lord, for to Him do we ascribe the freedom in whose light and glory we live. We see the door “ opened by fair Freedom’s hand the light, the radiance, thrown upon the enfran- chised race; the progress made, the achievements effected by them; and we ascribe it all to God. And we look forward to yet greater developments. We despair not of the race. Notwithstanding many discouragements and disappointments, the course of the race has been, and still is, a forward and upward course. We wish to refer all the blessings of our freedom to their real source — the truth as it is in Jesus — and we will give the praise to Him to whom it belongs. All freedom comes from above, from Jesus at the right hand of God. “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” These words of Jesus referred to all time; they were true 1800 years ago; they were true 100 years ago; they are true now; will be true in all ages ; true everywhere. They are the prophecy declaring what the great result of the Gospel in the world shall be. Christ’s Gospel is the Gospel of liberty. It everywhere brings deliverance to the captives. Christ’s words are words that give freedom. No other words give freedom. What liberating power there is in His word ! Satan is the great enslaver. All chains that bind men for destruction are forged in hell. Jesus is the great Deliverer. We want to appre- ciate this blessed fact, and praise Him for the wonders of His grace and truth. From man’s greed, and ambition, and lust, that enslave his fellow-man, Jesus frees; from Satan’s cruel chains and sin’s bitter 6 bondage, and hell’s gloomy dungeons, Jesus frees. He frees by the omnipotent influence that attends His truth. “ The truth shall make you free” is Jesus’ life-giving declaration to the enslaved everywhere. I. Consider , first, the immediate reference of the statement. — The Lord Jesus, when He spoke these words, was addressing enslaved men — those Jews. Enslaved children of the devil, yet they blindly and foolishly fancied that they were free. They said to Jesus, “We are Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man ; how sayest Thou, ye shall be made free?” But they were slaves to ignorance. They did not know the truth. Had they known it, they never would afterwards have crucified the Lord of life and glory. They were slaves to pride. How proudly they boasted that they were Abraham’s seed ! They were slaves to prejudice. They would not allow that a Galilean could be a prophet. “Search and see; for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” Now Jesus was of Nazareth in Galilee. They were slaves to hatred, malice — to all murderous impulses. In v. 37, Jesus says to them, “ Ye seek to kill Me ; ” and again, in v. 40, “ Ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God; this did not Abraham.” Jesus let them know that they were helpless slaves of the devil : “ Ye are of your father the devil ; and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. He is a liar, and the father of it.” What slaves these Jews were, while boasting that they were free ! But Jesus said to them in pity, “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Was this prediction at all fulfilled in the case of any of these proud Jews ? Might not some of the 3,000 converted at Pentecost have been some of those addressed by Jesus ? In Acts iii. we read of several well-to-do persons, possessors of lands and houses, who were members of the Jerusalem Church ; and may not some of these have been among our Lord’s hearers, and have come to know the truth which now delivered them from the slavery of sin and error ? The seven deacons, mentioned in Acts vi. were not ignorant men of the lowest class ; and in the same chapter we read, “ And the word of God increased ; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests became obedient to the faith;” and is it not probable that some of these priests had heard Jesus, when He said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free ?” What a powerful truth ?vas the lesurrection of Christ from the dead! We read, “And with great power gave the Apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all.” The resurrection of Christ connects itself with all the rest of “the truth as it is in Jesus.” It connects itself with all the doctrines concerning man — his nature, his fall, his recovery — with all the doctrines concerning God — concerningChrist. It involves all redemption. Preach the resurrection of Christ; and you are preaching His Divinity, His Humanity, His crucifixion, His atonement, His saving grace and power, — everything that is necessary for man’s deliverance from the bondage of sin and Satan, and for bringing him into “ the glorious liberty of the children of God.” The Apostles preached it — filled Jerusalem with the truth ; the Spirit made the truth powerful ; the truth broke down Satan’s strongholds; burst the fetters of darkness and error; and Jesus’ prediction was gloriously fulfilled, “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free;” and thousands upon thousands, even in Jerusalem, rose up, and received salvation by faith in Christ Jesus, and rejoiced in the liberty of the children of God. II. Let us, secondly, consider the truth as liberating the world — The look of Jesus, when He said these wonderful words, was all-inclusive. He was looking, not at one nation only, or on one age only — but looking round on all nations, and down through all ages, and to all races — when He said, “ Ye shall know the truth ; and the truth shall make you free.” Jesus could measure the infinite power of the mighty truth He brought down from heaven, all centred in Himself. There were enormous gulfs to be bridged over, mighty chasms to be filled up, huge thick walls to be broken down ; and the truth would do it all. It began its mighty work; and soon fell the frowning wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. See how it taught Peter that He should call no man common or unclean ; and freed him from the prejudice that would exclude from his respect even the Gentile proselyte to Judaism. See how it freed Saul of Tarsus from the haughty prejudice which had used to call the Gentile dog. The Gentile dogs were now his dearly beloved brethren. He calls Quartus a brother. He had previously regarded the Gentiles as dogs ; but now he says, “ Quartus a brother." How the truth changed his sentiments towards mankind ! He now preached the truth, that “ God hath made of one blood all men to dwell on the face of all the earth.” What a doctrine ! But a few years before he would have abhorred that doctrine, and have been ready to stone the man that would have dared so to proclaim it as to comprehend Abraham’s seed. Now he ■could preach that we are all one in Christ Jesus — that in Christ Jesus, Jew and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, were all one. So the middle wall was broken down. “The Circumcision” and “the Uncircumcision” became one. And among the Gentiles themselves the power of the truth destroyed the slavery to old ideas. The truth taught that all were sinners — that “ all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” What a leveller that truth was ! Again, it taught that Christ died for all, because all were dead. It taught that Christ was the Saviour for all men. These truths levelled all men. They put patrician and plebeian, prince and people, rich and poor, on the same plane, and said, “ Ye all are sinners ; but Jesus died for you all; believe on Him, and be saved. Ye all are moral beings, immortal, accountable — but ye all can be saved in Christ Jesus.” Herein we have the true principles of man’s equality and fraternity — the principles whose results must be the liberating of all mankind. In those principles you have the powers that must, in the long run, break the fetters of every species of slavery, and bring in universal freedom. Remember that little epistle of Paul to Philemon concerning Onesimus, the runaway slave. He calls the slave, now 8 converted, “ My son Onesimus ; ” and requests the master, Philemon, to receive him, “ not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, both in the flesh and in the Lord.” Here you have the universal and everlasting principles put forth which must, in their operation, ultimately destroy all slavery. The power of these principles, silently working, like leaven in the hearts of men, becomes at last mightier than armies with all the engines of warfare. It is the power of God. Who can resist that power when it rises up into action ? Hope to resist as successfully the advancing tide, the careering storm, or the mighty earthquake, as to resist the power of the truth. It destroyed not only the ancient idolatries, but all the ancient slaveries. Feudalisms and serfdoms have fallen before it. It still is working in all its living power. The world still needs it ; for the world is still under the curse of slavery ; and the only engine to crush and annihilate it all, is the omnipotent force of the truth in Christ Jesus. The only hammer to break all slavish chains is the hammer of the word that Jesus brought down from heaven. The only lever to uplift the classes degraded under bondage everywhere — to lift them from the darkness, the woe, of their state, into the light, and the hope, and the joy of true liberty before God — is the lever of the glorious Gospel of Christ. It will presently destroy all caste in India ; it will ultimately place woman everywhere in her right position ; it will destroy slavery in Arabia and Africa ; it will give peace and healing to that long-suffering, groaning Africa, breaking all her chains, and lifting her into light and glory. With the mighty Gospel in this world, all kinds of slavery are doomed — slavery, whether personal, or political, or moral, or social, or spiritual — all is doomed to destruction. This is to be a free world. The truth will bring about the final complete liberty. The liberty of heaven is to prevail in this world. God’s kingdom shall come, and His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let us be sure that the great result is in the purpose of God to be consummated. Jesus, sitting upon the circle of the Universe, working out all the counsel of His will, has uttered His mighty word to all the tribes of the earth, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free and you and I, though dazzled at the past results of the truth among men, cannot comprehend the splendour of the whole result, when this word of His shall have been fulfilled in all its glorious intent, and Jesus “ shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all.” III. Let us now, thirdly, apply the text to the case of the destruction of West Indian slavery — the bringing about Y)f that emancipation whose Jubilee we this year celebrate. Looking rightly on the state of things previous to fifty years ago, we have to observe a great dark mass of slavery — much more than what the common eye could see in these Western countries; and we have to hear Jesus announcing these words of power; and then to mark the result. We shall then see how the truth hath broken down the whole mass of that slavery — freeing not only the 830,000 in these countries, but millions more ; and then we will praise the Divine Liberator. 9 Note, first . that Christians in Europe, a hundred years ago, were enslaved in chains of error, from which the truth delivered them. — What wrong ideas most of them entertained at that time concerning the African race ! Many of those British and European Christians knew not the truth. Excellent men and women many of those Christians were ; but they did not know the truth concerning the race enslaved in the West Indies. In their ignorance of it they believed that slavery was the right state, the best state, for the poor African. Some believed that the African was only a higher specimen of the mere brute-creation than the ape and the monkey — believed that the African was not an immortal being but a soulless animal, to which it was a blessing to be kept in bondage. British Christianity never would have tolerated slavery for ten years, far less for 200 years, if it had only known all the truth about the poor black-skinned African. And so Jesus pitied the ignorant, as He interceded for them, saying, “ Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do.” And turning to them, He said, “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free from all your false notions and prejudices. You wdl then know that the African is not a soulless brute — not below proper manhood ; but that he has a nature similar to your own — that he is an immortal being like yourselves, with mind, and conscience, and spirit — a real partaker of a common humanity with yourselves. The truth shall set you free from error, and put you upon the path of duty.” 2nd. Note, too, that the slaves' owners, and the managers and others set over the slaves, were all in the chains of a dreadful slavery, from which they needed deliverance. — “Their reason blinded, their conscience stifled, their judgment warped,” many of them sincerely believed “ that God up in the sky had made the black people to be slaves and the white people to be the slaves’ masters ” — believed it was the very plan and purpose of Divine Providence. Oh, the dreadful mental slavery that could make one man believe it right that another man should be his chattel 1 We note, however, that this man did not appreciate the real manhood of that other. Even Christian pulpits preached the doctrine that slavery was right ! We will not descant upon the cruelties, the brutalities, the barbarities of slavery. We will only say that the system could not but have intoxicated men with what has been called “the fatal poison of irresponsible power,” and must, in many instances, have converted slave-masters and managers into monsters of cruelty.- It is easy to imagine the poor man over the slaves, “ with his passions running mad ” with the coarseness and the cruelty, the necessary product of his position and circumstances, in a far worse moral condition than the most abject of the slaves he ruled over. Oh, the terrible system under which the poor white man, that might otherwise have been a saint, became perverted into a miserable lump of ungodliness, inhumanity, and cruelty! Cowper, the poet, thinking of all this, declared he could not be a slave-owner — that he would himself far rather wear the chains than fasten them on the slave. The poor white man over the slaves became, by the very result of his wrong position and relation towards them, a more 10 pitiable creature than those who trembled before him. He, the creature of the horrid system that robbed men of their manhood and of all the rights ot their manljood — his eyes blind to the immortal, the rational, the moral, the spiritual nature of the being he called his property — his goods that he had bought, and would sell, and had placed in the same category with the inhabitants of his stable and his stye — I ask was not such a man to be pitied ? Who would wish to be forced into such a position as the one he occupied, not- withstanding all its power and apparent splendour ? Was there not a blight on the mind and spirit of such a man ? Could that blight have been avoided ? Did not God look down in pity on him ? Whose slavery was worse — that of yon poor black one on the stocks, or that of this one whose reckless cruelty fastened that one on that cruel engine of torture ? Jesus on high pitied men in such a position, and interceding for them, said, “ Father, forgive them, for they are in blindness and darkness.” And to these poor men He said — though their ears were too deaf to hear His voice — “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” 3rd. 1 hen there were the same poor dark-skinned bondsmen themselves . — No doubt about their enslaved condition, for that was personal, outward, demonstrated under God’s sun. “ Their manhood lost in chattelhood ; ” degraded to the standard of the brute creation; 800,000 of them in that terrible degradation ; the agony continuing for 200 years ! Who can describe the terrible robbery of slavery ! It robbed man of his birthrights, of his manhood, of his free will. All his powers and faculties must perforce be employed for the welfare of another, whose mighty foot was upon him, and who claimed to be his owner. It was said of that slave, “ He must know nothing but the will of his owner,” or that owner’s deputy. He must be kept in ignorance, for ignorance is ever the handmaid of bondage. He must not know that he had a Friend in heaven ; must not know of the God that made him, of the Christ that redeemed him. Said one of these slave- owners, “ If the slave ever learn to read the Bible it will for ever unfit him to be a slave. He should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it. What a knowing master — how shrewd and far-seeing — that uttered such a truism ! What a comment on the declaration in our text, “The truth shall make you free !” So long as the dark chains of stolid ignorance could be kept riveted on the slave, so long might slavery be secure. Enlighten that slave, and he must shake oft' his chains, or perhaps die in the noble attempt. The slave was robbecl of the right to exert his powers for the promotion of his own interests ; he could not try to better his condition. He was chained for life to another’s will. Himself being another’s property, he could acquire no property of his own. His very child was the property of his master. I think I see that man, in the desperateness of a distressed heart, chopping off his own hand with an adze. He was a cooper by trade, and was now to be sold at auction. He had, in years past, lived in our parish in Barbados, in which he had a wife and child he loved. He had been sold again, torn from his beloved ones, and carried into another parish, where he took another wife, by 11 whom he had another dear child. And he was now put up at auction to be sold and dragged away he knew not whither — away from his second wife and second child. And being now commanded by the auctioneer to expose his limbs and wield his tools, his heart felt sick and overburdened, and he bent his knee and spread out his right hand on a log of timber near by, and resting the adze on his knee, and lifting the sharp tool with his left hand, with a couple of rapid strokes he cut off his own right hand, and said, “ There, now — who will buy me ? ” This poor slave could not call his wife and child his own — could erect no social fabric in the community — in fact, he was no member of the community. Could the slave use his powers in toiling for himself and family ? He could not improve himself, or lay the foundation for the improvement of his offspring. Even the pleasing duty of providing for himself and his family was denied him. He had to receive his weekly meal, and pork, and salt, and his yearly jacket and two pairs of coarse pantaloons from the man whom he called his owner. The force of his arm — the power of his nerves and muscles — was not his own. The right to himself he was robbed of. We cannot, in a few minutes, paint the terrible robbery. But the Lord of all saw the dreadful system of wrong, and He graciously said to the bondsmen, “ The truth shall make you free.” 4th. We are thus led to note the necessity for the communication of the truth. — The truth in Jesus must be made known and applied, or else all this slavery would have lasted on till this day. Jesus said, ‘‘Ye shall know the truth.” From the middle of the circle of the universe He cried out to men in the eighteenth century, “ Ye shall know the truth.” The slaves in Great Britain must all know the truth. Said Jesus, “ I shall begin my work with the African bondsmen .” And so Christian missions must commence working among the slaves in these Western lands to demonstrate what the slaves really were. He called first upon the Moravian Church, at that time just renewed after a period of persecutions and desolations in which she was very nearly extinguished as a Church. “ Little” (at that time) “among the thousands of Israel,” yet the Lord would honour her by making her the mother of modern Protestant Christian Missions. The Moravian Mission to the poor negro slaves in the island of St. Thomas must be regarded as the true beginning of modern Christian Missions. The call came, like a voice from heaven, to the young renewed Moravian Church at Herrnhut, and on the 21st of August, 1732, the leaders of the missionary enterprise started to carry the Gospel to the poor slaves. Leonard Dober and David Nitschman — men whose names should be known and held in honour by all the coloured people in these countries — started from Herrnhut ; and their start to the far-off work to which God had called them was the beginning of the end of slavery. A hundred years must, after that, elapse before heaven’s hammer should strike off the last twist of the chain of personal slavery in these parts. In the course of that time other missions from other Churches must work, and work successfully, among the slaves. Not very long after the Moravian Mission work was started in St. Thomas, the poor black woman slave, Anna, was spiritually 12 awakened, then her husband, then her brother Abraham. And the blessed saving work went on. The truth, needed to be known concerning the slaves, was now gradually being revealed. In course of time the Moravian Church started missions in Antigua, in Barbados, in Jamaica, and other West India islands, and numbers of conversions could be reported from year to year, thus adding to the demonstration of the truth as to what the black enslaved ones really were — that they were rational, spiritual, immortal beings. Half a century after the Moravians had started their great work in these slave countries, the zealous Wesleyan missionaries commenced their noble efforts ; and later on, the devoted missionaries of the London Missionary Society. The value of these missions cannot be described in human words. Other missions, too, were started. They all contributed to the fulfilment of Jehovah’s grand purpose of love, and pity, and liberty. The immediate, though gradual result, gathering to itself every year in cumulative force of evidential value, was that it was most powerfully proved to British Christianity that the poor African slaves were real men — veritable brethren to the white man — spiritual and immortal — redeemed bv the blood of Jesus, even as others — capable of receiving impressions of the highest spiritual order — of receiving and loving Christ — able to sit down in the kingdom of heaven with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. And so the blindness and darkness were gradually removed from the minds of British Christians. Ere long these Christians had solemn and serious questions to ask concerning West Indian slavery. And so it went on, until the whole British nation was roused, and the resolve, “Those men and women, our black brothers and sisters, shall not be held in slavery,” became the British nation’s resolve, and the result was that in 1833 the British Parliament, obedient to the nation’s voice, decided “ that slavery shall cease throughout the Empire of Great Britain.” When the slave chains that had held British Christians in bondage were broken, and the truth was revealed to them that the slaves, owned as chattels, were partakers of a common humanity, possessors of the same spiritual nature with themselves, into what an agony of earnestness those Christians rose 1 They came to know the truth, and the truth had set them free ; and now the same truth must so far perfect the work begun that slavery in the Western countries should not last. British Christians had, through the freedom where- with the Son of God had made them free from error and prejudice, become enabled to look aright on slavery and pass the right judgment on it. That judgment was that it was a robbery, a villany, an inhumanity, which, at whatever cost, must cease. The cruel blot on Christianity must be wiped out. The anti-slavery party grew. An army of Christian men and women rose up and fought the battles of the slave. Jackson, and Clarkson, and Sharpe, and Wilberforce, and Buxton, and numbers of others — a brilliant galaxy of noble Christian men and women — dedicated their lives and fortunes to the work of purging Christian Britain from the crime of sanctioning the system of wrong whose cruel chains rattled to her, and whose groans groaned to her, from these lands. The pro-slavery party, as you can well under- stand, also fought right bravely for the continuance of that system of 13 injustice and wrong by which their wealth was multiplied. No ex- penditure of money was too lavish, and all the arts of sophistry were employed to prop up the abominable iniquity. But “truth is mighty, and must prevail ” — the result of the battle between light and dark- ness, between righteousness and wrong, was sure. For Jesus sat there upon the circle of the Universe, saying, “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Like leaven, the truth spread through the heart of Britain. And on the ist of August, 1834, the triumph began to be celebrated in these lands ; and dn the ist of August, 1838, this day 50 years ago, the great guns were fired in joy, and the great trumpets were blown, as 830,000 bondsmen leaped out of their chains, shouting, “ We are free ! We are free ! ” And there were thousands of those bondsmen, who, knowing well where their freedom had come from, and how it had been brought about, lifted up loud songs of praise to Him who had said, “The truth shall make you free,” and who, by the power of that truth, had brought the freedom to a glorious realisation. And so, now, we praise, not so much the noble worthies who fought the battles for our race. We praise Jesus. Regarding them as the instruments whom Jesus raised up for the fulfilment of His purposes of mercy, we praise Him for them. We praise not the Parliament of Britain for the great Act of Emancipation ; we praise that Jesus whose word commanded that Act from Britain. We praise not Britain for the noble edict by which ^ 20,000,000 were paid the slave owners as compensation. It was a beautiful exuberance of justice ; and may we not, by way of paren- thesis, ask whether there should not have also been some grant by way of compensation to the slaves made free ? But to us, the money transaction is of small importance ; while we praise God for the destruction of slavery — for the ist of August, 1834, and the ist of August, 1838. IV. And now, fourthly, the text may be regarded as the motto that Jesus gave the newly-enfranchised race ; and as the motto still to be kept before the race, “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” What other state of things could have been expected than that a race, just emerging from a long personal bondage, must come out bound with other slavish chains — those of ignorance, and various vices, and bad habits, and wrong views of things. Rescued from mere personal slavery, and invested with the corresponding freedom, there were higher, nobler liberties to be reached ; and these must be gradually reached through the spreading knowledge of the truth — “ the wisdom that cometh from above.” Oh, that we all could feel what terrible slavery is the slavery to evil passions, to corrupt propensities, to grovelling views ! There is the captivity of the soul — of that which makes the real man — the captivity of the highest manhood — to sin and the devil. There is such a terrible thing as submissive obedience to all the will of a corrupt heart — to all the carnal promptings of an evil nature. There is what is called “ the old man,” with all his vile and corrupt propensities, obedience to which is a dreadful bondage. The Apostle says to the Romans, “ Ye were the servants of sin,” repre- senting them as having in time previous been in bondage, but as now 14 made free by the Gospel. They had, in their previous history, yielded their members as servants to iniquity, to uncleanness ; but now, being no longer under the dominion of sin, but being made free from sin, they were solemnly bound to yield their members unto God as instru- ments of righteousness. May God give us more and more of this higher moral and spiritual freedom ! The bondage of sin is hard bondage, and the wages of sin is death. Sin is bitter service. “The way of transgressors is hard,” and it ends in the second death, unless Jesus deliver us. O, the slavery to degrading vices ! — to fleshly desires ! O, the slavery to this world, its maxims, its pleasures, its fashions, its will ! O, the power of the passions — and of evil habits ! The prophet described the power of that kind of slavery, and the helpless- ness of the victims of it, in these words, “ Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? Then may ye do good who are accustomed to do evil.” But what men cannot do, God can do. God can change the Ethiopian’s skin and the leopard’s spots ; and He has, I know, worked that mighty moral miracle in the case of many of us here. We have known the truth ; and the truth hath made us free from the slavery to evil passions — to strong corrupt habits. Many of us can now praise God for moral and spiritual freedom — for a real change of heart, resulting in a real change of life. We now enjoy freedom of access to God, from which sin had formerly kept us back. We walk now not as other Gentiles walk. We walk not after the flesh — one of our former masters. We are not now led by Satan, as captives at his will. Nor do we now follow the will of this evil world. We walk in the light, as we follow our Heavenly Guide ; as the sons, the children, of God, we are led by the Spirit of God. The Son of God hath made us free ; and we are free indeed. We walk in the liberty of the children of God. “Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” And the instrument by which all this has been accomplished, is the all-powerful truth of the Gospel applied by the Holy Spirit to our hearts. We want ourselves and our race to progress in all this higher and nobler freedom. And we would also desire to progress socially and intellectually, as well as morally. Should we not, for instance, endeavour to become more and more free from the slavery of mere dependetice ? Should we not seek to acquire and develop more and more of manly backbone and self-reliance ? A writer, in a recent issue of a local newspaper, says that we, the coloured race, are a mimetic race — in other words, that we follow others — we ape others. Now this mimetic characteristic, if it exists, may have its uses, its advantages ; but it also has its ghastly dangers. You all know the fable of the vain and stupid frog that burst herself, and died in the attempt she made to blow out and swell out herself to the size of the stately ox in the meadow; and you well know how to apply that fable ? We do very well to imitate the manly self-reliance of others, their ardour for progress, their earnest- ness in the education of their children, their frugality, and any other good qualities they may exhibit. But many poor persons who should be saving pence till the pence shall become pounds, and the pounds rise from units to tens, and to higher figures still, are apt to spend their last penny to imitate, in outward appearances, those who have large balances at the banks ; and so, by outward display for a time, rush to social, and, in some cases, even to moral ruin. We should also seek to be delivered from wrong ideas concerning manual activity and labour. There is a dignity in labour — in labouring with one’s hands for bread and for prosperity. This truth needs being deeply impressed upon the rising generation. Many of our younger people have, we fear, gone far astray from right notions in regard to manual labour; regarding such labour as mean and unrespectable. Be we sure that out of honest and persistent labour comes all great progress. There is no disgrace in manual labour. The idea that there is any disgrace in it is one of the evil fruits of slavery. From the plough-tail was called the man who alone could save his country in a time of crisis ; he saved it, and returned to his plough ; and where was there any disgrace in his manual toil ? What shame did the Apostle feel when he showed his hard hands to the assembly, and said, “ You know that these hands have ministered to my necessities ?” I should like to know where the shame lies in a man’s handling his shovel in working up his little plot of ground ? I should like to know what greater dignity the man, with his pen at his desk in his office, has over the man with his agricultural fork working for his maintenance ? I should like to know which is the more honourable position — that of the girl sitting before the piano, or the girl feeding the fowls, milking the cow, washing the family’s clothes, weeding the father’s plot of ground ? The girl before her music says, “ I am quite above all that.” This girl’s father dies ; and then ! — I will not picture the rest — the wretchedness, the misery, the rags, the woe, the consumption, the early grave. There is dignity in manual toil, and much more than that. May all the truth that is in our Bible, on this point, make us free from all false and distorted notions. Idleness and sloth lead to moral ruin, and, in the long run, to family and racial degradation and extinction ; while alone, upon perseverance in honest industry, in any sphere, may we hope to erect a substantial social fabric. Let me now ask — with all faithfulness to myself as a coloured man, and to the race to which, on my mother’s side, I belong — ask, “Are there any special vices from -which we should seek xompleter freedom ?” From what we read, and from what we hear, we are led to ask, “ Are the black people, the coloured people, more untruthful and more dishonest than other people ?” I do not say that they are ; but I do say that such is the description that seems to be getting freely circulated concerning us. I once heard a magistrate on his bench say, referring to the directly contradictory evidence of two black men on a matter of fact, that he had been a magistrate for five-and-twenty years, and that he could not help stating, as the result of a large experience, that the black people were liars. I understand that in a magazine recently published in this country, it has been stated that, among the black and coloured people, lying is still so prevalent a vice that it might be considered as a characteristic of the race. Is it really so ? A very black man once said to me, “ Sir, never believe a negro.” 16 I said, “ Does that take in you ?” “ Yes,” replied he, “ I don’t always speak the truth.” If all this is true, then does not the race need further deliverance, through a more earnest commendation of Gospel truth to the race’s conscience ? I have often told you that if religion does not make a man truthful and honest it has been of no use to him. And if we are not saved now from lying and stealing, how can we expect to be saved from doom and hell hereafter ? I heard a man say that he had never met with an honest black man. I replied that I was very sorry to hear that ; for that I had met with, and could name, several honest black men and women. Our late Postmaster-General, Mr. Hodgson, in his highly interesting report of his department for 1887, expressed “ his extreme regret that so many lads who ought to be qualified for.the simple duties to be undertaken at the smaller district post offices, fail, not from lack of sufficient ability to perform them, but on account of dishonesty or untruthfulness, or both, which, up to a certain age, so many of them seem to possess, and are powerless to repress.” Now, I think the truth stands in this way: — Untruthfulness and the disposition towards petty larcenies and peculations, are among the vices most developed and nurtured by slavery. A race just freed from bondage would be expected to be very much characterised by untruthfulness, deceptiveness, and very distorted ideas of mine and //tine — vices, habits, ideas, from which the race may not, in one or two generations, be so far delivered as to make them no longer characteristic. But I have no hesitation in affirming that such has really been the moral and Christian progress of the race in these countries, that there are thousands and tens of thousands of coloured persons in these colonies who are as truthful, as honest, as conscientious, as upright, as the best men and women of any other race ; but that, at the same time, there is, as might be expected, a large remainder of the race still needing to be freed from the dominion of the evil habits of lying and petty theft, inherited from slavery ; needing the application of the truth that Jesus speaks of, to free them yet more from error, mental, moral, practical ; to raise them up to higher liberty and dignity. And the success already achieved among the race, by means of the Gospel truth, should encourage all the lovers of the race to continue Gospel work among them, and encourage especially the upraised members of the race, to aid in the efforts to uplift the still deeply degraded and down-sunken remainder to a higher platform of thought, and work, and life. A question often put is this , — Nave the coloured races in these countries made the progress they should have made ? It is a question we have not time to answer ; and indeed, put in that form, it is not possible to answer it definitely. I wish for myself to say, that, in my opinion, nothing less than splendid progress has been made. We are, of course, dissatisfied with ourselves ; and we will be sure to think we could and should have done better. But I think we have done well, and that the race in these countries is gradually rising socially, mentally, morally. I think that in this jubilee year Afric’s children in these countries deserve the congratulations of all other races for the good progress they have made. I think that the present condition of 17 the race encourages us to hope for yet greater things. 1 see in all these countries, members of the race doing well in the different learned professions. No one is astonished now at meeting with a black lawyer, or a black clergyman, well qualified in his profession. Upwards of forty years ago, when I was a boy, there was coloured Dr. Arnott, our neighbour, who often came over and spent an evening with my father, and 1 perfectly recollect how astonished I was at first at what appeared to me the strange phenomenon of a coloured medical doctor. Such a phenomenon as that does not now surprise me. Dr. Arnott afterwards became eminent in his profession in other West India Islands. I recollect my first week in Antigua, twenty-five years ago. As I stepped from the boat on shore, I was introduced to a black man, of noble figure, with manners faultlessly gentle, and speaking in excellent English. On inquiry, I learned that he was a person highly respected by all persons in the city — a credit to the race. A day or two after that I went to the legislative hall to hear the debates, and there I saw two coloured men, members of the House. One of them spoke in first-rate classical English, and was listened to with deference bv all the other members. Freedom opened the door to all of that. Where would have been those two coloured gentlemen, if the truth had not made the race free ? Before the week was out I was in happy fellowship with an ordained minister of the Moravian Church — ordained so far back as thirty-three years ago— the Rev. Mr. Buckley, who, though a black gentleman, was the respected pastor of a flourish- ing Moravian Congregation in that island. Some time after, it was my delight to sit on a missionary platform there, and listen to a speech from a black Methodist minister — a speech that could have borne all criticism, and would have done no discredit at an Exeter Hall anniversary meeting. In Barbados we have, in all the professions, coloured men winning honour for themselves, which would have been impossible without the freedom God gave fifty years ago — impossible, notwithstanding that many of those men might tell of their European descent in one of the two lines. Chief Justice Reeves is a member of the race, an ornament to the legal profession and to his country. The rector of St. Joseph’s parish in that island, the Rev. Mr. Thorne, is another member of the race. Time would fail to mention the many other Barbadians of the race that might be named with credit. And in this British Guiana, too, we have several coloured men in all the professions, doing highest credit to themselves. Need I call such names as Mr. G. Forshaw, who has, as Mayor of Georgetown, enjoyed the highest civic honours the community could bestow — as the Rev. Dr. J. E. London, Rev. J. Trotman, Rev. Mr. Glasgow, Rev. J. R. Moore, of the Anglican Church ? It would be easy to multiply honoured names. And in the public service, in all these colonies, are many worthy members of the race, to whom freedom supplied the advantages of which they have so creditably availed themselves. Likewise in commercial circles are many coloured men — merchants of good repute, and others holding high places of trust and responsi- bility, the door to which was opened by fair Freedom’s hand. And most of the educationists in these countries are of the coloured race. 18 Just now we have Professor Maxwell, an eminent and successful student in the science of phrenology, delivering scientific lectures in Georgetown. In the realm of literature, our race has its not unworthy representatives. And besides the numerous instances of prominent individuals of the race, who deserve most honourable mention, there are the many thousands of them, who in their respective humbler spheres, are living highly creditable lives. In short, I think that, considering all the circumstances, the progress made during the fifty years since freedom, should not be otherwise described than as splendid. Sometimes I scarcely am able to see how the race could have done better. Still, we are not satisfied ; we feel as if greater achievements should have been efifected ; and this feeling will excite us to endeavour after grander progress for the future. And, looking towards the future, let us remember that the principles of right and sure progress are to he found only in the truth as it is in Jesus. Will the. lazy man find justification of his laziness within the four corners of this Bible ? Or the vicious man justification of his wicked- ness ? Or the spendthrift of his wastefulness ? No. This Book of Truth fosters every principle that makes for progress, for credit, for honour, for glory. Then, if we wish to make progress in every direction, let us increase in the knowledge of Jesus — in the knowledge of the truth. Let us seek to get our whole mind, and soul, and spirit, saturated, soaked through, with the truth that is in God’s Great Book ; and then we shall rise yet more rapidly in every way. We will get more and more free from superstition, from error and sin, and become stronger as men and women of God. Let none of us be satisfied to continue under the dominion of vile lusts and appetites — servants of sin and the devil. I would press you to resolve to educate your children up to the highest point you can. Inconvenience your- selves in order to educate them. Seek to “ bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” By your own example, as well as by your counsel, train them up to “ be diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” “Train them up in the way in which they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it,” they will not despise hard work, and will not despise God’s Book, and the church, and the duties of religion. And save your pence — from your shilling, save your penny. Do not think that a penny is too little to care for. “ Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.” Seek — by honest means — by frugality and persever- ing industry — to rise in the social scale. If you improve morally and spiritually, you will be sure to make all other worthy progress. Any progress not connected with, not springing from, moral progress, will be only evanescent, unsubstantial, cannot be of lasting value to the individual and to the race. Oh, the magnificent possibilities that Freedom opened up before the race ! Through those possibilities, as I have already shown you, I am now where I am. Mr. Reeves is what and where he is; Mr. Forshaw, Dr. London, and thousands of other honourable members of the race in all these countries, are what and where they are. And the door of possibility is still wide open ; it cannot be shut ; and there is no telling what may be the glories that may irradiate the race fifty years hence. Who knows but that some poor boy who now sits here listening to me, may in years future become Attorney-General of this or some other colony, or Surgeon-General of the Hospital, or Chief fudge in some part of the British dominions, or Superintendent of the .Moravian Mission Work in some country, or Chairman of some Methodist Mission District ? Freedom has opened the door to the highest dignities and offices; and it depends upon their personal character, their industry, their attainments, whether any of them shall ascend the heights pointed out. Or, if even any individuals of the young people now before me do not rise into great public offices, or be invested with great church dignities, yet they may, through the proper training their parents may have given them in habits of industry and integrity, lead honest and upright lives, and thus lay the foundation for yet further progress on the part of their own offspring. The honest, industrious, God-fearing man is a truly noble man ; and these boys may become thus ennobled through their parents’ teaching and example. But if we, the parents, are careless, indolent, wasteful of time and money, if we neglect to train the children aright, indoctrinating them with wrong notions as to what constitutes true respectability ; then the progress of the race will be checked ; its development will be retarded. How many lads have, through bad training, been started forth into the world, not in the direction of a worthy and noble progress, but as pests and burdens to society, to become vagabonds, villains, assuring the perpetuation of our expansive police and prison institutions ! How many a girl has been marched out into the world, whose best acquirements have been how to dress and dance so as to catch the vulgar eye — useless, helpless, incompetent for real work, unable to take her proper place as help- mate for a worthy partner ! These remarks apply to every race ; for these great mistakes and failures are to be everywhere seen. But, that results of this kind may be obviated so far as you are concerned, open your minds, brethren, to receive all the truth of the Gospel — moral and spiritual truth, whence alone springs all social truth — all the honesty, and the integrity, and the purity, and the other virtues, on which alone true progress can be founded ; and then there will be the more assured hope, the stronger certainty, of a still brighter future for our race. More emphatically yet would 1 put it, that true religion in the individual and in the family is the only right foundation for a sure and lasting progress for any race. Thirty-one years ago 1 entered the married life. Not long after I was married I attended a “ married choir festival ” at Mount Tabor chapel in Barbados. A coloured brother delivered an earnest speech, and among other highly profitable remarks he said, “ Brethren and sisters, take my word for it, religion is the only true safeguard in a family." He was a blacksmith that said it, not a parson, but the words fell upon my mind with all the force of a powerful sermon. To me, a young man of twenty-two, it came like a voice from heaven. I have remembered the words ever since, and I 20 have often quoted them. “ Religion is the only true safeguard for a family.”' For the race to progress, family life must improve. True religion in the family is, I repeat, the true foundation of real, lasting, worthy progress ; the want of it means the destruction of the family — the retrogression of the race. I have seem families hopeful like the early spring — like the sweetness of early morning foretokening a glorious day — brought to ruin and disgrace, and almost to extinction, for lack in them of true religion, of the rule of God’s Word. 1 remember a man whose family went to ruin when he was about sixty years of age. The family lived in a very neat and comfortable cottage, which had ample grounds around it. The earlier history of that family had been a happy chapter. In those early days the children in that household were their father’s glory. His sons grew up splendid youths, and his daughters had been the life and the joy of his heart. But there was no religion in that family, and therefore corruption must gradually do its work. The daughters, one after the other, became disgraced ; the sons blamed the father for his bad example, and cursed him ; the household became the arena of daily strife and bitter confusion ; the father’s heart became overburdened with distress, and I remember how, one day, when I visited him, he took me outside under the shady trees and poured out to me the tale of his griefs, and then, taking off his hat from his snowy head, and looking up to the sky, he said, while the tears ran from his eyes, “ I wish that Almighty God would send a whirlwind to take up my house, with me and all my family in it, and whirl it, and whirl it, and whirl it, and drop it in the middle of the sea, and let us all go down together to destruction.” The merciful God did not send that whirlwind, but we have to note that the want of religion in the family had been the cause of all that disgrace and distress. Oh, let us put God’s Word in the right place of authority in our hearts and in our households. Let us turn with all reverence to the truth in God’s great Book. Let us not fancy that we are yet so free as to be above the need and the help of that truth. Let us get the word of truth to grow mightily in us and prevail over us. Let us get it to dwell in us richly, and get ourselves more completely under its sway. Let us meditate in it day and night, and then we shall be like trees planted by the rivers of waters. Such trees ! What progress ! Bringing forth fruit, and whatsoever we do prospering. One sad feature, very noticeable in the present day among the younger members of the race, is a departure from loyalty to God’s word. Our youth, there can be no doubt about it, need to be earnestly recalled to their allegiance to God’s truth. May the messengers of the Gospel, labouring among them, succeed in recalling them to the reception and the obedience of the truth ! What, after all , is to be the future of the coloured race in these Western lands ? Some persons of naturally pessimistic temperament create before their minds a dark and gloomy forecast. They predict that ere long the churches, which look chiefly to the coloured races for support, shall languish till they die ; that the coloured people, especially those outside of our towns and cities, will not care to support the institutions 21 of religion; that they will depart altogether from the living God, from the fold of Christ ; that ruffianism and vagabondism will prevail ; that irreligion will, like a canker, eat out the life of the race in these countries; that the race will sink back into its original barbarism; that it will, in the long run, become irreclaimably debased, and at last be utterly annihilated and extinguished in these parts of the world. What a sad and gloomy forecast ! And those who made this forecast point out to us many reasons for their distressing vaticinations, chief among which is the spirit of the rising generation. They tell us that the young men and women of the upspringing generation are ungovernable ; so ungodly, and Christless, and faithless, and careless, and lawless, and lustful, and lazy! True or not — so do many say. If the description is true to the extent these observers would make it out to be, then it behoves the whole Church — ministers, preachers, members — to be up and doing, so as to counteract the evil tendencies. Some, too, there are', that tell us, that even some of those who are at the heads of the churches are turning traitors to the truth ; ignoring its power over human spirits; acting as if the Word of Jesus were now unable to keep people together in the fold of the church ; and, therefore, going directly in for carnal entertainments, theatricals, and other questionable amusements, as needful to keep the young people connected with the churches ; as if the Gospel were now being played out and needed some other and lower elements to supplement it ! O, the lamentable departure from Scriptural and Apostolic methods ! Some see in these and other things sad tokens that our race in these countries shall gradually deteriorate and relapse into semi-barbarism. For my part, I do not see the necessity for predicting any such gloomy results. I say, that even if all these sad conditions were existent and at work, there is no reason why they should continue ; but that we should see in those sad conditions how much we need the right men — men with the unction of the Holy Spirit to rise up, and plead with the younger members of the race, on behalf of God, and Christ, and truth, and duty — to impress upon their minds and hearts the truth that maketh free. And let us depend upon it that the right man will be raised up. Jesus, who hath begun and so far carried on the work of freedom, will not now let that work come to disgrace and destruction. He knows how to act. He always doeth wondrous things. See Him there upon the throne, head over all things to this Church. He still is saying, “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Let us t-rust that He will raise up the prophets who shall be equal to the work needed to be done, and who shall successfully call the rising generation back to truth and duty. . A nd so we may with confidence indulge in a forecast of another character. I see the right messengers come. I hear their voice. 1 listen to their speech. They speak the right word, in the right tone. It is the truth spoken in love. Sympathy, holy unction, sincere love, characterise the message of these men of God. Their word is with power. It rouses our youth ; it regenerates the people. Up the people spring from selfishness, and vanity, and vice ; they receive the truth ; they turn to the Lord. They become true members of Christ : 22 X true members of the Church. They reach up towards the stature of men and women in Christ, endeavouring, through grace divine, to assume the true dignities becoming real manhood. They apprehend the responsibilities of their position. They realise the possibilities before themselves and their children better than their enfranchised forefathers had comprehended those possibilities. I see them appre- ciating' the dignity of labour. I see them setting a high value on integrity, honesty, purity. I see them supporting their churches without appealing to external help ; but nobly and triumphantly pushing on the work of t.he Lord. I see them dedicating their children to God — training them to understand and fulfil their solemn obligations towards the Church of Christ. 1 see education flourishing; and some of the very highest places in the public service occupied by members of the race, because become, by their attainments and their character, qualified to fill them : and members of the race, in some worthy numerical proportion to other races around them, occupying, in every sphere of work, positions of trust and responsibility ; and the race, in all its classes, uprisen to a moral equality with the corresponding classes in other races. All this is perfectly possible ; and I expect that, in course of time, all this will come grandly to pass. With these cheerful forecasts we look forward upon the fifty years now before us. All that we want is, that “ the truth ” be successfully commended to the minds and consciences of our people, so as to free an increasingly larger number of them from the slavery to many wrong notions and to many evils that still prevail; to righten their views ; to awaken lawful and proper aspirations ; to open their eyes to the glorious possibilities before the race ; to show how those possibilities can be realised, and to commit them earnestly to the duties and responsibilities of the present hour. May those who minister to the race in the Word of God correctly apprehend the needs of the race, and be able to supply those needs. Our duty, as the preachers for the race, is a simple but a solemn duty — to preach the truth boldly and fearlessly, but with all love and earnestness, believing that the right knowledge of this truth will win the people for God, and make them wise unto salvation, and free indeed ; — believing that this truth is the only lever that can uplift any race to credit, to honour, to dignity, to glory. This is what the truth has already, to some extent, hitherto done for our own race ; and the results shall, in the future, be yet greater and more glorious. May this pulpit ever be the unweaned and efficient expounder and corn- mender of the heavenly truth ; and may “signs follow” the dispensing of this truth here as elsewhere! May it work mightily; and may the result be the people’s present temporal good and their eternal salvation ; and all to the glory of our Redeemer. ■ 2 ; 3 ADVANCE OR RETREAT? AN EMANCIPATION JUBILEE SERMON, BY G. R. POTTER, PREACHED DURING THE JUHILEE CELEI 1 RATION IN BRITISH GUIANA, IN AUGUST, 1 888. Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said. Let us go up at once, and possess it ; for we are well able to overcome it . — Numbers xiii. 20. They said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt . — Number xiv. 4. W E have reached the fifteenth anniversary of the personal freedom of the West Indian blacks. Surely the members of other races are not surprised at the importance we attach to this season. Surprised the world would be, I believe, if we could agree, by our studied silence, to thank neither God nor man at this season. The emancipation of our forefathers, fifty years ago, be it granted, was the grandest of moral, social, or religious events in West Indian history. Then the sordid slave-owner yielded to the claims of equity, and closed his speculation in human sinews. Then the cringing form of the slave straightened itself into true human proportions, to stand on human rights. Then Queen Victoria called 800,000 slaves from their dungeons to rank among her willing subjects. Then the angel of heaven threw open wide the gates, and blessed the long procession as it passed from bondage into freedom. Brethren, we rejoice in our freedom. Yet I desire to remind you, not only of our altered position as freemen, but of our new responsibilities. Our fathers, as slaves, had no institutions to main- tain. How different to-day ! The black labourer has now his wife to support, and his children to feed, and clothe, and educate. He must contribute, in some way or other, his small part of the general revenue of the colony. He must also devise liberal things for the upkeep and furtherance of the religion he professes. Those bondsmen laboured hard, it is true, but they had only a taskmaster to satisfy. Their work was performed as mere manual performance. The lash was their only stimulant ; fear, their only motive. Now, agricultural labour deserves the dignity it enjoys in civilised lands ; and the labourer is growing to feel himself honourably related to all the other 24 makers of the world’s prosperity. He can see the line of ascent that winds upwards from field labour ; and such an upward look calls forth more of real energy and exertion than slavery can. A free people have higher and sterner motives for industry than an enslaved one, while the future is sure to impose a penalty on idleness, better than the State can. Our enslaved forefathers were cooped together within narrow mental bounds, and the complacency with which they took their dark lot, perhaps, even tended to prolong their lives. We, however, my young friends, find ourselves born to liberty; and this means, in this nineteenth century, that we must be subjected to a goading discipline. We must not be allowed to sleep too long the sleep of infancy ; but we must be stirred to activity. We must be a doing race and not a sleepy one, for even so short a time as fifty years. Though only fifty years on the way, we must keep our feet apace with others longer there than we ; we must company them ; we must not be outwearied by them, if our heads are to be crowned with theirs. We are expected to claim an honourable place among our fellow-creatures ; and that, never too soon. Our enemies ridicule us, because we have not, in fifty years, been so grandly successful ! And some of our friends, too, for the same reason, confess themselves discouraged with regard to us. What say we to ourselves at this jubilee ? Shall we proceed to the seemingly unequal battle ? Shall we aspire after the land of the sons of Anak ? or, Shall we distract ourselves, and retire from the company of conquering races, and be buried in an Egypt of abject ruin ? These alternative questions are suggested to us by the texts announced. Let us, then, guided by the lines of the ancient history, consider firstly, the plea for advance ; secondly, the vote for retreat ; and thirdly, let us encourage ourselves to make this the time for decision. I. The plea for advance. Only four men stood up at Kadesh- barnea pleading for advance into the land of Canaan. As for mere number, that minority was a small one and a weak one. Not a large space of ground it occupied, and not a large compass of voice it raised. Physical bulk and power were on the other side. These four men were the unpopular and offensive party. The weight of millions bore against them, and their plea for advance could have been hushed very easily beneath heaps of stones if the Lord had not been on their side. Let us note, my friends, that these four men, after all, were holding the right principle. They were speaking the mind of God. Their counsel was wise and practicable. They even lived to see their advice acted upon after a period of forty years. The truth they had promptly and frankly spoken was neglected by one generation, but still it was honoured by the next. Are there not, too, voices among us urging us to press forward towards better things ? Though we would rather see the majority of our people bent on progress, yet we ought not, I think, to despair of our race’s future while some are to be heard among us advocating progress. It is the right-thinking minority that gives hope for the majority. Permit me to emphasise the fact that the leaders of the people, Moses and Aaron, did not bend to the opinions of the people when those 25 opinions tended the wrong way. It is painful to remark that on some occasions some of our leaders are actually led while they fancy themselves leading. Do they not at such times indulge the popular taste rather than reprove it and educate it ? I remember a certain schoolmaster in this colony years ago telling me how he succeeded in building up a large school by giving yearly sensual treats. When asked whether the inlluence of those treats was not morally injurious, he simply replied, “Well, you know, the people like them.” A certain minister of religion, too, has been reported as celebrating a Sabbath-school anniversary by a drunken dance, in which he himself took an unseemly part. May all those who undertake to lead us study to lead us away from moral degeneracy ! I think we should not overlook the fact that Joshua and Caleb, who advocated the people’s entrance upon the possession of Canaan, were men who had made personal experience of the country beyond. While their brethren had been camping at ease at Kadesh, they had gone forward at the risk of their lives to see and know. Therefore they returned wiser than all the congregation of Israel. They were, on their return, men of larger experience. We should have expected the same of all their comrades on the spying tour. The sight of the land flowing with milk and honey should have been to them all as a higher education after their long tramping through a wilderness. I think they had been privileged to go before the camp of millions to gain knowledge, to train their heroism and to rouse their martial spirit. Yet with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, they were quite content with the bringing back of no more good than a cluster of tempting grapes for exhibition to the children of Israel. Hut Joshua and Caleb brought back advanced views, which they laboured to dis- seminate. I would venture to say that during these fifty years just past, God has been ordering forward a selection of our race, here one and there another, into the foreground of usefulness. I cannot but look at these men as the people’s forerunners. It may be unreason- able to expect that during fifty years all our people could have advanced as these fortunate ones have, but it is not unreasonable to expect that the precepts and example of these will be rightly under- stood and valued by succeeding generations. Though they now occupy exalted and advanced positions, we are glad to know that they do not feel themselves sundered from their humbler brethren ; but that it is their joy that their successes and achievements should be regarded as proof of the capabilities of their race, and as typical of a more general progress in the future. It is with becoming pride that I now remind you that we have seen during these fifty years the black minister, the black barrister, the black doctor, the black poet, the black musician, the black landed proprietor, and the black merchant. Indeed, I doubt whether there has, in these countries of the west, been any kind of office, or responsibility, or function, save, perhaps, that of administering the Government, that has not been satisfactorily discharged by some representative coloured man during the last fifty years. My brethren, remember that this is not, however, the terminal point of our progress. We have barely started as a 26 people. And I refer to these facts as mere forecastings of what we ought to consider the possible, the probable, and the unavoidable. Allow me further to remark that Joshua and Caleb spoke in the tone of hopefulness. They took the optimistic view, while their colleagues chose the opposite. They were men of “ another spirit.” The people grew angry with the optimists and applauded the pessimists. Naturally so. Caleb’s optimism lay straight along the line of battle. He encouraged them to get possession by conquest. His optimism was not of the sickly, cowardly, lazy sort. Such an optimism, as a mere dream, may have pleased the people, who, I dare say, had cherished such, now and again, on their way from Egypt. How strange that conceptions of walled cities, mountain fastnesses, and gigantic human proportions opposed in front, made some men as grasshoppers in their own eyes, while they begat in other men a braver hope ! I fear there is among some people of African descent a very harmful impres- sion of self-inferiority, of constitutional unfitness for true greatness. This ill-concealed fancy, wherever it exists, is what blackens the future of the black man, and spurns all encouragements to advance. Away from our midst then, let us say, with that pessimism that declares us too black to open the stores of classic literature, or to peep into the mysteries of science, or to live for the culture of art. Let us believe it for our own selves and teach it to our children that we are not too black to be led out of the labyrinth of ignorance, or to be pulled out of the meshes of the net of poverty, or to mount the ladder up to equality with other men. Again, I cannot but regard it as suggestive that Joshua and Caleb, the men that held the higher views, were men of religion. Men that follow the Lord fully are sure to prove that he leads them forward and upward. It was the religious argument that gave whatever emphasis Caleb was able to lay on his speech that day. Religion always feels herself quite able to overcome the difficulties that rise in her path. Religion argues strongly for progress. She prophecies that on the line she marks out there must be success. There is no evidence that religion disqualifies for advancement in this life, though this is often suspected. I have read that, in a regiment of soldiers in Louisiana, it was supposed, by those in authority, that the unusually high death- rate in the regiment was the result of the religious meetings held among the soldiers. It was stated that religion tended to depress the spirits of the men, and to injure their health. Happily, however, investigation as to the physical influence of religion amongst the men was made, and the result of that investigation was quite reassuring. It was found that, while two-fifths of the whole regiment had died, only one-eighth of the Christians in the regiment had succumbed. O, that as a race we could be truly religious ! All kinds of health and development would then be assured to us. May I not also call Joshua and Caleb students of destiny ? It was easy for them to expect the conquest of Canaan, because they seem to have been like Rioses, men with a lively recollection of the whole history of their deliverance from Egypt and progress through the wilderness. “ The Lord is with us ” was one of their remarks, and, 27 while saving so, I believe they felt themselves standing in a central position surveying Israel’s glories past and Israel’s greater glories to come. They knew the place they held in God’s favour, and that made them understand that the land flowing with milk and honey was not too rich or precious to be given to them. They could so read the course of events that they expected to see that land taken from a race of giants and given to them as the Lord’s people. What bold interpreters of destiny ! I think that there can be now no more interesting question to ask than this — Is there to be no future of greatness for the Black Race ? I know that at the present day this question is very interesting, and that it is being answered in the affirmative and in the negative However, the history of God’s miraculous dealings with the race seems to forbid the negative reply. Look at the slave trade as over-ruled by an all-wise Providence to be the entrance door into the glorious emancipation of 1838. Look at that emancipation as God’s own stupendous triumph on behalf of this race. And say whether there is not historical warrant for the expectation of an era of greater usefulness and distinction than is evidenced by our past. I think there must of necessity be further progress to complete the historical sequence. There may have to be a parenthesis of discomfiture and disgrace intervening, throughout which we may have to be further helped by the patience, and pity, and liberality of true philanthropists. But who will dare to predict ulti- mate failure and ruin for our posterity ? There is wonderful vitality in the African race. How do you account for it ? The following anecdote you may have already heard. A lady was, one morning, waked out of sleep by a noise at her window-pane. There was a sparrow outside, furiously dashing at a butterfly inside, and the butterfly inside was most tremulously fluttering away its little life in the presence of the hostile sparrow outside. But while it seemed, each moment, as if the hopeless butterfly would be destroyed by the desperateness of the sparrow, there was an intervening protection for the frail butterfly that neither of them understood. The Unseen Hand that has rescued our ancestors from barbarity and slavery in turn, will yet hold us up among civilised peoples. II. The vote for retreat. The people instinctively felt that there was no permanent home there, in the wilderness. Then was the crisis : either back to far Egypt, or over the hill into Canaan. They chose instantly according to their spirit. “ Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt,” said they. Do we not see that those people were still slaves ? Slaves in spirit ; slaves to Egypt. They had no aspiration — no ambition. There was in them no lofty imagin- ing. They took no bold outlook. They were without a spirit of enterprise. A most pitiable sight that was ! A whole nation, we may say, mentally and morally fettered. Their manhood was completely crushed and ruined within them. Their spirits could not rise, and God, who had borne with them “these ten times,” consumed their very bodies in his anger. Ah, my friends, the serious question I have now to ask is, “ What are the millions of our people saying to one another in these West Indies?” Is it “ Let us return into Egypt?” 28 There was a time when Spain, conceited at her possession of both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar, inscribed on her coins the pillars of Hercules, surmounted by the motto “ Ne plus ultra.” But, after she came to better knowledge and knew of a whole new world lying to the west, she obliterated the “Ne” from her coins and made her motto read “ Plus ultra.” I think I know many who seem to be saying “ No more beyond.” O, that they could be brought to a better knowledge, and then heard to exclaim with eyes wide open, “ More beyond ! ” There is for us and for our children a great deal beyond, my friends. Shall we go back from it all ? God forbid ! I now observe that the children of Israel were not alive to their opportunities. They were very near the land of promise ; twelve of their number had already entered it and returned safely to them ; and their leaders, Moses and Aaron, were quite prepared to continue to lead them. All that was required of them to put them in possession of the land was obedience to Moses and to God. It might have been to them, as it proved to be to their children afterwards, a com- paratively easy progress through their difficulties, and a peculiarly easy possession of the pleasant country. The natural opportunities that our people have for gaining education, wealth, and social influence, and, after all, every other kind of influence, are, to my mind, great. But let them be rid of the feeling of self-depreciation, and feel that the opportunities of bettering their position in life are before them, and should be unweariedly used, and there will be no more signs of the liberated race returning into Egypt. I would also bring to your notice the fact that the children of Israel were not faithful to their traditions. What thrilling traditions were theirs in reference to Canaan! Tradition told them that the country was theirs; that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had lived in it and been buried in it; that in going to Canaan they were going up to the homes, and family scenes, and family altars of the revered progenitors of their race ; that their possessing the land would have been some fulfilment of grand promises God had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But evidently they were not mindful of the force of these traditions. There was no noble passion for inheritance of that holy land, as should have been expected. I would ask you, dear hearers, whether our traditions of the time of slavery ought not to enkindle within us an ardour to get on into greater light and liberty. There stands an old slave before the auctioneer and a group of slave- dealers, as we are -told. “A fine old man,” cries the auctioneer. “ honest and faithful, and a good preacher, too. Who will bid for him ?” Up the bids go from twenty-five dollars to sixty-five dollars. Instantly the poor old man, whose heart had been palpitating with fear all the time, burst into tears. He had been saving some money, hoping to buy his own freedom ; but now one more bid would have put his freedom beyond his reach. He, however, mustered enough courage to cry out hurriedly, “ Seventy dollars ! ” Aghast the bidders all stood. The auctioneer repeated the bid for seventy dollars in his wonted style, and at the last announcement the sale closed. That man bought his own freedom. May our descendants keep alive such passionate desire for freedom, and not return into Egypt. •29 We are inclined, too, to blame the Israelites for no t having been appreciative of their peculiar privileges. There was no nation like that nation with the worship of the true God, with the Divine Presence among them, with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night for guidance. Was it not a fearful suggestion ,to return towards Egypt with the Tabernacle and the Ark and the Shekinah ? But let us not fail to blame ourselves even more if, in spite of our many educational and religious privileges, our many teachers, and mis- sionaries, and sermons, and lessons, and readings, we were to prefer the road back to Egypt. I would have you notice, too, that brotherliness and unanimity are most awful when displayed in the cause of retreat. Is it not alarming to read, “ They said one to another. Let us return into Egypt?” While we deplore the want of brotherliness and unanimity among our people in good undertakings, let us see that these two mighty forces do not work to procure us disgrace and ruin. They may be a great danger in our whisperings, in our mutual confidences, in our social gather- ings, in our public meetings, in our benefit fraternities, in our friendly societies, in our anniversary celebrations, in our holiday gatherings, if, in connection with any of these there be the revival and upholding of customs that we should have left far away behind us. Let not the suggestion of returning into Egypt be tolerated. Let us, in passing our words and influeuce one to another, be careful not to be inviting our race back to what is coarse, and vulgar, and obscene. Is it not a disgrace to these Jubilee celebrations that in some quarters it is proposed to have performances of the obscene African dances that disgraced even the darker days of slavery ? Let us resist every intention of going backward and downward, and let those who must go back into vice and shame do so singly, separately, exceptionally. Let there be nothing so scandalous as a wholesale retreat. I have also to say that the emancipation of the body is a failure in those whom it does not raise to larger liberties. The emancipation of Israel from Egypt was not a failure as regards the nation, for the nation did enter and inherit Canaan. But physical emancipation was a failure in the case of those individuals of the nation who, on the borders of Canaan, showed a fatal fondness for the degrading- associations out of which they had been redeemed. The emancipa- tion of the slaves in these countries can never be proved to be an enormous historic blunder. But individuals among us may so far descend into ignorance, and brutality, and vice, and ruin as to become distressing instances of those that could not be freed, that could not enter into true liberty. III. Of course, this is the favourable time for decision. I bid you, my dear brethren, be advised by the spirit of Caleb. “ Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome the difficulties that, like walled cities and garrisoned forts, forbid our further progress. I say we will be well able, if we will cultivate true power. There is power in industry. Periander, one of the seven wise men of Greece, said, “ Nothing is impossible to industry.” There is power in economy. Wesley’s prescription for dealing with 30 money is something like this in meaning : “ Get all you can lawfully, save all you can lawfully, give all you can lawfully.” There is power in integrity. It is fresh in our minds that an important official in this colony, in the yearly report of his department, painfully deplores the common failure of lads of ability through dishonesty and untruthful- ness. There is power in intelligence. We can never be respected by other races while we continue ignorant. There is power in religion. May we all know more of the power of the word of God, of the power of the blood of the Atonement, and of the power of the Spirit of Holiness! And may the coloured populations of these West Indies bethink themselves of the grand opportunity of at last gathering among the nations of the saved to praise the Name of the Great Redeemer for ever and ever. Amen ! 31 The following Hymns were Sung in the Juiiilee Services I. [Tune : “ Majesty ” in Union Tune Book.] 1. This day we rise to sing (More joyful theme not found), Our race’s liberty, On Christian British ground. We’ll celebrate our Jubilee, And seek a nobler liberty. 2. Our fathers, slaves, down-trod, In bondage sore were held ; Their sons now shout, as free, “ Dark slavery’s expelled ! ” We celebrate our Jubilee, And pray for higher liberty. 3. Our liberty we prize, And this thro’ life we’ll do ; And thankful be for all The blessings which accrue. We celebrate this Jubilee, And seek a purer liberty. 4. Praise God that British hearts, Touch’d with celestial fire, Vowed ne’er to rest till we Should freedom’s boon acquire. ’Twas power Divine that made us free To seek for moral liberty. 5. The Gospel’s power doth break Each form of slavish chains ; Then let us bless our God, Whose.Word the victory gains. We celebrate this Jubilee And pray for spir'tual liberty. II. [Tune : “ Jubilee New ” in Union Tune Book.] 1. Come, brethren, sing the song Which well befits the time, When we, in mighty throng, Should join in praise sublime. The year of Jubilee is come ; Rejoice in every heart and home. 2. A sacred joy let be, Outgrowth of grateful thought That stamps our liberty As what our God hath wrought. The year of Jubilee is come ; Rejoice in every heart and home. :V2 3. Emancipation’s day Rose out of hopeless night ; Extol this grand display Of new creating might. The year of Jubilee is come ; Rejoice in every heart and home. 4. Survivors of the woe That buried lies behind, Have seen fair Freedom throw Her radiance o’er the mind. The year of Jubilee is come ; Rejoice in every heart and home. 5. Now Freedom's children too, Shown by her guiding hand, What they may be and do, Do march at her command. The year of Jubilee is come; Rejoice in every heart and home. III. [Tune: ‘‘Sound the Loud Timbrel .”] 1. Sing all ye people with liberty blessed. For Africa’s children are free in the West. [Repeat. | Fifty bright years have gone since the grand edict That hurled the death-blow on the system of wrong ; Jehovah hath triumphed in Britain’s great verdict, And snatched the oppressed from the grasp of the strong. Then swell the loud anthem in this Jubilee; For now in the West, Afric’s children are free. Swell the loud anthem, &c her children are free. 2. Praise we the name of our conquering Lord — Extol we the might of His all-potent Word : [Repeat.] Victorious Truth destroyed Slavery’s each stronghold, Drove out the dread demon with heavenly might ; And the Lord in his justice, as with Israel of old, Restored to the bondsmen their charter of right. Then swell the loud anthem, &c. 3. Repeat in full chorus Jehovah’s high praise ; For Justice, and Mercy, and Truth are his ways — [Repeat.] Justice, advancing from nation to nation, Is shivering in every land slavery’s chain ; Completed ere long be the glorious salvation, And Freedom’s bright banner o’erstream evety main : Then swell the loud anthem, See.