SEEKING HELP FROM THE WRONG SOURCE.
In the Review of Sept. 24, 1901, we referred to a question from a Baptist correspondent to the Western Recorder asking where Baptists would stand if they should progress toward Rome in the next ten years as fast as they had in the last ten years. We answered that at the present rate of progress it would not take them ten years to get clear over to Rome. In a Roman Catholic paper, the name of which is Catholic Opinion, for July, 1901, we find a more extensive deliverance on this subject. An Afro-American leader in the Baptist Church declares that help for the negro must come from the Catholic Church. They are warned against political alliances which are sucking the African race down to ruin, and pointed to the Catholic Church as the only power that can save them from the evils they are suffering at the hands of politicians. The article is headed “The Baptist Decision,” and is so significant that we quote it entire, as follows: — “A prominent leader of the Afro-American council and of the Baptist Church, Prof. Jesse Lawson, spoke before a vast meeting of colored Baptists of the District of Columbia recently. This eminent man is able to see much further than most others of his race. The scales have dropped from his eyes at last, and he is now fully awake to the fact that political alliances have been the quicksands wherein the negro has been sucked down to ruin and perdition. He concluded a powerful and well-thought-out address with the following remarkable survey and counsel: — “‘We have not advanced one step politically since 1876. We have been betrayed by the white man. Louisiana, North Carolina, and other States where the negroes are more numerous, have adopted amendments to their Constitutions making us mere animals, without power of expression or intelligence enough to vote. Maryland is following the lead set, and I warn you that it is only a question of time, if this keeps up, and we do not do something, when there won’t be a State in the Union where the negro is not disfranchised. Let us turn before it is too late. We can yet be masters of the situation if we will but act. We cannot ally with any political party, so let us ally with a strong religious force, that we may effect the change. “‘As one of the leaders in a local Baptist church, and as speaking to an audience of Baptists, I say now that only the great and powerful Catholic Church can help us. We may not all desire to join the Catholic Church at once, but we will see the way in time. I think it must be God’s will that we effect our salvation through the agency of the Catholic Church. The leaders have offered us protection and political rights within the folds of the Catholic Church. We are assured our rights as citizens and human beings, and I see no other way in which we may save ourselves and save our future. We are being ground to powder by the white man in this country, and only the Catholic Church can save us. Let us take matters into our own hands now, and let us act.’” “The reference to the Catholic Church was greeted with immense enthusiasm by the whole assembly. The address was debated after the speaker had closed, and each speaker favored the idea of allying with the Catholic Church as the only way out of the problem and the only hope for the negro in America.” From the foregoing it appears that the speaker contemplates that Baptists will go over bodily to the Catholic Church, “not all at once,” he says, but in time he thinks they will see their way clear. Paul says that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And how little it is evident that persons understand that power when they can talk as Mr. Lawson does, and turn away from that power, and appeal for help to the greatest and most subtle enemy that power has ever had in this world—the Catholic Church. The negro race is, to be sure, cruelly suffering socially, politically, and physically at the hands of politicians. But what spiritual and eternal evils will they suffer if they give themselves unto the hands of that power which the apostle Paul warns us to shun as the “man of sin,” the “son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped” (2 Thess. 2:3, 4), and the mark and worship of which we are to reject on pain of the unmixed wrath of God poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation. Rev. 14:9–11.