HARD NOW, BUT HARDER BY AND BY.
By L. A. S.
AMONG the signs which point to a coming change for the worse in the conditions affecting the progress of gospel work in the South, one of the most striking appears in the form of a book which we are told is selling rapidly throughout the South, written to prove that the negro does not belong to the human family, but is a beast. The book is quite pretentious in appearance, having three hundred and eighty-two pages, is well bound, and contains a number of illustrations. It is issued by the “American Book and Bible House,” St. Louis, Mo. From the title page we quote: “The Negro a Beast, but Created with Articulate Speech, and Hands, that He May Be of Service to His Master, the White Man. The Negro not the Son of Ham.” “By Chas. Carroll, who has spent fifteen years of his life and twenty thousand dollars in its compilation.” The book purports to discuss the question of the negro’s “relation to the human family” from the standpoint of the Bible and of science. The publishers announce that they are “convinced that when this book is read and its contents duly weighed and considered in an intelligent and prayerful [!] manner, it will be to the minds of the American people like unto the voice of God.” If the negro be a beast, it of course follows that he has no soul, in the ordinary sense of the word; and the author does not shrink from the appalling logic capable of deduction from his premise. On page 129 we find this: “‘But,’ says the enlightened Christian, ‘if a man is married to a negress, will not their offspring have a soul?’—No; it is simply the product resulting from God’s violated law, and inherits none of the divine nature of the man, but like its parent, the ape, it is merely a combination of matter and mind. ‘Then, if the half-breed marries a man, will not their offspring have a soul?’—No! ‘If the offspring of man and the negro was mated with pure whites for generations, would not their ultimate offspring have a soul?’—No!’” Of course it is all a waste of time to preach the gospel to creatures that have no souls. The author of this book declares that it is not only useless, but highly improper. It is casting pearls before swine. We will quote him once more (page 166): “The existence of this prohibitory statute [Matt. 7:6] demonstrates the existence of an animal which man, in his criminal ignorance of God’s plan of creation, might mistake for a man, and thus be misled into giving him the Bible with the view of conferring upon him the blessings of Christianity, which were intended alone for man. When we view this statute in the light of the sciences, and in that of Paul’s declaration that ‘there is one kind of flesh of man, another flesh of beasts,’ etc., it becomes plain that the dog, the swine, and the negro all belong to one kind of flesh—the flesh of beasts. The Scriptures are described as ‘holy.’ Rom. 1:2, etc. The kingdom of heaven is compared to ‘goodly pearls.’ Matt. 13:45, 46. Hence we are led to decide that ‘that which is holy,’ and which man is forbidden to ‘give unto dogs,’ is the Bible; and that the pearls which man is forbidden to cast before swine is the kingdom of heaven. This statute was evidently meant to confine the use of the Bible and religious worship to man, and excludes the lower kinds of flesh, which embrace the negro. Hence, if it is criminal to give the Bible to dogs, it is criminal to give it to the negro; if it is criminal to undertake to Christianize swine, it is criminal to undertake to Christianize the negro.” That great question, “Who was Cain’s wife?” is solved by the author of this book. He declares that Cain married outside the human family altogether, and explains this assertion by the statement that Cain’s wife was a negress.575 The significant thing about all this is not anything in the book itself, so much as the fact that it is, as we are informed by a Southern man, having a rapid sale throughout the South. Shallow as its arguments are, they are specious enough to deceive some thoughtless minds, and to inflame popular sentiment, already so strongly biased against according to the negro the rights of a human being, so as greatly to augment the difficulties under which gospel work for the negroes must be conducted in that section of the country. With such signs of the times before us, we can see very clearly the force and propriety of what has been said and is being said concerning the urgency of the work in the South. We can see the force of the statement we have often read, that “the work which we have neglected to do when times were favorable, will have to be done under the most forbidding circumstances.” Now is the most favorable time we shall have to push the work. L. A. S.