The statesman. [volume], June 01, 1906, Image 2

About The statesman. [volume] (Denver, Colo.) 1889-1906

Image provided by: History Colorado

                
THE TEST
OF
RELIGION
THE MICROBE OF PREJUDICE
HOW IT BITES.
Mrs. Elizabeth B. Grannis of New
York has committed the unpardonable
sin of enacting the role of a practical
Christian, by taking into her home a
little Negro girl, Christian League
Woodyear, treating her like a real hu
man being, giving her an opportunity
to develop and expand morally and
mentally and providing the means
whereby these objects can be attained.
Christian League Woodvear's parents
very foolishly allowed themselves to
be born black, and herein they made
the mistake of their lives.
Mrs. Grannis, a lovely Christian
character, moved by the loftiest im
pulses and a sincere desire to do the
will of the Master, who said: “Suffer
little children to come unto Me and
forbid them not, for of such is the
kingdom of heaven." took this little
Negro waif wheh it was only nine
months old and adopted it into her own
family, surrounding it with all the com
forts of a Christian home and assuring
it of a future which few poor little
black girls are permitted. Here she
is taught by precept and example
everything that a little girl ought to
know in order to become a good and
useful woman. She is not being raised
as a servant, nor encouraged to despise
and ignore her own race. She is sini
ply being given a chance which so few
little colored girls have to grow and
develop the latent talents which God
has implanted in the breasts of all His
children, black and white alike. Free
dom to expand without fear and with
out the slavish feeling which robs the
mind of independence, destroys the in
dividuality and hampers and stunts the
growth of that thing we call man
hood and womanhood, little Christian
League Woodyear, as I have said,
knows that she is a member of the
black race, but the fact that she is
does not militate against her in the
home of good Mrs. Grannis, whose old
fashioned notions as to the oneness of
the human family do not harmonize
with the modern accepted ideas of lat
ter-day Christians, who find it not a
difficult matter to love Jesus and His
black and colored children in the ab
stract. Of course, these new concepts
THE S i ATESMAN, DENVER, COLORADO.
of Christian charity (love) and broth
erhood are absolutely out of harmony
with the ethics of the New Testament,
but it must be borne in mind that the
New* Testament in American Christian
churches is always subordinate to
American Christian prejudice when
ever it trenches upon the social life
of American Christians. They reserve
to themselves the right to construe the
text in order to make it conform to
what it is popularly believed to mean,
and they draw the line against any
sort of intercourse with black people
on terms of equality. The doctrine
that God is our Father and man our
brother is regarded ns dangerous and
mischievous, in that it opens the door
to social interminglng of the races,
which, to their way of thinking, is a
mistaken policy. So they establish
white churches for white people,
preach a white Jesus, who was really
brown or tan-colored; sing of white
angels and dream of Heaven as a
place where white Christians who
have kept the faith, and the Negro in
his place on‘earth, will rule forever
and forever. Beautiful dream, but it
is said dreams go by contraries. True
Christianty is not founded on either
prejudice or bigotry, but on love to
God and love to man, and no one is a
true Christian who says he loves God
while in his heart he loathes and de
spises the least of His creatures who
have favor in His eves. How Amer
ican Christians can harmonize their
race prejudice with their Christianity
and still be consistent is one of the
greatest puzzles with which a black
man has to wrestle. The exhibition of
intolerance and all uncharitableness
displayed by the persecutors of Mrs.
Grannis because of her attitude in de
fense of her faith in the teachings of
the Bible, is one of the saddest com
mentaries imaginable on the genuine
ness of the religion of the men who
have taken the initiative in this un
holy crusade against her. Their ar
guments are both untenable and illog
ical; their action is as unworthy of
I Christian men as it is disgraceful, and
I it is as disgusting to other Christians
who know the truth as it is cowardly
i and brutal In Its ferocity. Mrs. Gran
I nls hath chosen the better part; she
! is a century ahead of the whlte~Chrfc
tian church of America, which is still
in the shambles of sin and the bonds
of iniquity; which worships God with
its mouth, while its heart is far from
Him; which preaches cream and lives
skimmed milk. The test of Christian
ity is works, not words. Mrs. Gran
nls’ life is full of good works and
noble deeds and she will be longer re
membered by posterity than all the
hollow-hearted hj’pocrites rolled into
one who have cast odium upon the
Christian religion by their narrow,
bigoted, prejudiced and intolerant at
titude toward this good woman, who
has shown only kindness to the race
which gave asvlum to the infant Jesus
when Herod sought His life and helped
Him bear the cross up the ragged
heights of Calvary, where He died to
make men free. May the influence of
His unselfish sacrifice help to emanci
pate the soul of the white Christians
of America from the slavery of preju
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dice; help them to see with clear
vision that God is no respecter of per
sons, and to realize that the people
everywhere whom they do not know
are as Rood as those they do know.
Mrs. Grannis is armed with the truth
and is invincible and invulnerable to
the petty and puerile atempts to be
little her motives and to injure her
character by insinuation and innuendo,
born of a desire to obscure other
truths hurled at them, which her
calumniators and defamers have
neither discredited nor explained
away. JOHN E. BKUCE.
bankers, New York, May 26, 1906.
Some men look quite as miserable
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they do when at home.
While a man may be capable of lov
ing two women at a time, if he Is
sensible he will not attempt it
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MRS. M. E. BAILEY, 0. D.,
Assistant.
Phone Red 2337.
(2742 Larimer Street, Denver.