iHarrfyituj
(Drtora
Annual gfobressefif beltoereb to tfje ®exa* Conferences;
of tfje iH. <£. Cfjurcfj
*Sp
2Hisf)op &tUtam ©ccfeer Johnson
of tfje tZTexag ZBiocesle
Robert W. Woodruff
Library
Gift of
RAndall K. Burkett
EMORY UNIVERSITY
Special Collections & Archives
iHarrJjtttg
(Mera
Annual ^[tibresfsfetf bcltoertb to tfee ®exa* Conference*
of ttje S. 4W. C. Cfeurcf)
»
IBisfjop ^tUtam Jiecber Jtoimson
of tfie GTrxaa lMoce*e
WILLIAM DECKER JOHNSON
One cf the Bishops of the A. M. E. Church Presiding
over the Tenth Episcopal District.
INTRODUCTION
Some years ago a certain very sophisticated young
minister, fresh from college and having his diplomas all
framed and hung in his study, condescended to accept
a little out-of-the-way charge which had never been
given much consideration by the Conference. I say that
the young minister condescended to accept the charge as
a sort of stepping stone, for he did not feel that the peo¬
ple there had education and refinement enough to hold
him for any great length of time. However, he preached
to the congregation from manuscript, using always a
stilted, academic vocabulary which he had learned at col¬
lege and which he decided was the best means of bring¬
ing the people up to his plane of erudition, culture and
habits of thought. By some means, this very charge suc¬
ceeded in getting the next annual conference and during
the session it of course became the duty of the Bishop in
charge to preach on Sunday. Many of the members had
never seen a Bishop so the church was crowded to hear
him. He preached a wonderful sermon. It was practi¬
cal, logical, eloquent and inspiring. It was profound and
impressive and yet it was clear and simple. His thoughts,
were at par with the most complex deductions of the
philosophers but his words were those simple expres¬
sions such as we use in the field, the factory or the mar¬
ket place. In short, he made himself thoroughly under¬
stood by all.
An old, gray-haired sister sat in rapt attention during,
the entire sermon. After the manner of very old people
she reinforced her ear with the palm of he hand lest that
organ should fail her on a single word. When the ser¬
mon had ended the old sister handed down her decision.
"And you say that's a Bishop? Can't tell me that's a
Bishop. Why I understood everything that man said.
Now when Bro. Pastor preaches, I never do know what
he's talking about at all."
Well, I wish to introduce here another Bishop who can
also make himself understood. He also has a message
for us that is practical, logical, eloquent and inspiring.
Many of the expressions in this book evince a spiritual
vision which is sublime. All that we shall read here is
eloquent, all is inspiring. And yet a child could under¬
stand.
To be deep, to be intensely interesting and yet be per¬
fectly clear and simple is a gift which few men have. I
am sure, therefore, that Bishop William Decker Johnson
has done the race a great service in permitting these ad¬
dresses to be published.
WELBORN VICTOR JENKINS.
Frontispiece Bishop William Decker Johnson
Page
Introduction by Welborn Victory Jenkins 3
You Must Play Some Games Desperately If You Want
to Win 7
The Minister's Business is to Follow Jesus 17
Delving For Buried Treasure 25
No Place in Our Ranks For a Judas or a Simon 33
No Time to Make Money 44
Forward March 56
The Murder of the Innocents 65
you MUST PLAY SOME GAMES DESPERATELY
DP YOU WANT TO WIN
Annual address delivered to the Central Texas Con¬
ference of the A. M. £. Church (39th Session) at
Temple, Texas, December 7, 1921, by Bishop William
D. Johnson.
It is my purpose now to speak to those within the
sound of my voice as frankly and as candidly as I have
ever spoken to any gathering of my people, at any place
and at any time in all my life.
We, here, are representatives of the American Negro
race. We are the God-chosen spiritual leaders of that
race. We belong to a church which identifies itself with
the moral and religious uplift of that race. We have
met in an annual conference of that church. This gath¬
ering, this conference, this church reflects the aspira¬
tions of this race of ten millions of our fellowmen. It is
a battle; it is a race; it is a game to be won. We want to
make good; we want to win the game; we want to achieve
the victory. In order to win this game, this race, this
battle, we must stave off the combined and well-centered
force of an overwhelming opposition—an opposition
which is grimly determined to limit our progress and
destroy our opportunity. In order to win we must bring
our children up to the place where they are the moral,
intellectual and financial equals of any race on earth.
Can we do it? Can we win the game? Can we win the
race? Can we achieve the victory? Can we hold our
own against a well-controlled effort to destroy us mor¬
ally, to destroy us economically, nay, even to destroy us
racially?
8 You Mut Play Some Games Despebately
Some generals rush headlong into a conflict without
ever seriously counting up the cost, without ever se¬
riously considering the forces against which they are go¬
ing, without ever studying the minutest detail of the
ground upon which the battle is to be fought. First, you
must know yourself, next you must know your enemy,
next, you must know your ground, and last, but not least,
you must know how to fight. Opposing big numbers,
overwhelming force and strategic advantage do not count
if you only know your game and know how to play it; if
you know what you want to do and have got the grit to
do it. It all resolves itself to this: When the bugle calls
and the word is given, you must call to the front every
reserve of intellect and courage which is in you. In
other words, you must play this game desperately if you
want to win.
You have sometime seen two boys playing the harm¬
less game of checkers. One seems to have all the men on
his side; the other has but two or three. One begins to
brag and boast and make fun of his opponent; the other
sits quietly watching, thinking, fighting, sending imag¬
inary men in all directions, revolving hundreds of com¬
binations in his mind, putting a world of thought be¬
hind his every move. He puts all the brain he possesses
to work, calls up every reserve he owns, brings all his
mathematics and psychology into play in measuring the
probable mental capacity of his opponent. He makes
one man do the work of dozens, stands his ground and
fights with desperation. Finally you will notice that the
bragging ceases; the proud boasting ceases. The game
has become a draw; and a draw is always a victory for
the weaker side.
Most, if not all of the great men of history were born
with odds against them. Lincoln was born with all odds
against him. He had no even chance at books, nor
wealth, nor position; but he won the game because he
knew how to play—had it in him to play,, and play with
all his might.
You Must Play Some Games Desperately 9
Everybody has heard of the fame and glory of Theo¬
dore Roosevelt. Everybody knows that at his death he
was called the foremost private citizen of the world. Yet,
comparatively few people know that Theodore Roose¬
velt was born subject to disadvantages which would
have discouraged almost any human being. Roosevelt
was a sickly child, puny and pale. He had bad eyes and
a serious impediment of speech, and thus handicapped
most boys would have remained in the realm of medio¬
crity. Not so with Roosevelt. He knew that Nature,
Chance and Circumstance were his three great oppon¬
ents, so he settled down to play the game against them
with all the odds on the side of the three against one.
By skillfully adjusted glasses he so strengthened his eyes
as to be able to read thousands of books at home and be¬
come a perfect marksman in the field. He became a
naturalist of the first order, a writer of such ability as'
to draw a dollar a word for many of his articles, and
thousands who heard him speak declared him to have
been the foremost political orator of this age. This is an
instance of a man who played the game with all odds
against him and won overwhelmingly. From a puny lad
he became the most admired specimen of virile manhood
in America.
#*#**#***##
Graham Bell, the inventor of the marvelous telephone,
began life with all odds against him. It will almost bring
tears to your eyes to read of how that sturdy Scotchman
fought poverty, discouragement, ridicule, reverses and
overwhelming disappointment in order to perfect the
contrivance to carry the human voice, a thing which was
then laughed at, but which is now a momentary necessity
in every civilized community on earth. At one time,
Graham Bell was forced to give up even the girl whom he
loved and wished to marry. Her father consented for her
to marry the young man on condition that he would give
up instantly and for all time the foolish hope of trying to
invent such an impossible thing as a telephone. That
10 You Mut Play Some Games Desperately
ultimatum fell on young Graham like a bombshell and al¬
most drove him from the field; but he gave the girl up for
time and continued to fight; he continued to play his
game desperately against the greatest odds that ever
faced a young inventor. But finally came victory and
with it wealth, universal fame and the girl he so much
deserved and loved. But his troubles were not yet over.
During the years he had struggled so hard trying to coax
nature into giving up her secrets, he had worked openly
and had hid nothing from those around him. Dishonest
men spied on him, stole his ideas and now came forward
to steal his rights and claim his reward. Graham Bell
was now forced to fight through days and years, hundreds
of cases in the courts to maintain his rights. But these
he fought with the same zeal and desperation with which
he had fought against nature and circumstance. Finally,
after having fought it out all along the line, he won as he
deserved, an unconditional victory.
Down across the Field of Flanders, I see the dreadful
Germans come marching, invincible, irresistable, terrible,
crushing as they come, invading, destroying the cities,
laying waste the country and murdering women and
children. On they come, dealing death as they advance,
the measured tread of infantry accompanied by the roar
of their great cannons. To arms against them fly a
million Frenchmen with that high resolve to die for flag
and country which a Frenchman only knows. The two
forces meet on the borders of France. The French are
repulsed and began to fall back. On come the Germans.
Back fall the French, becoming each hour more and more
disheartened as they seem to see the time fast approach¬
ing when their beloved Paris shall go up in flames and
savage Huns shall thrust their bloody swords through
the breast of the mothers of France. The Frenchmen
begin to lose hope. They do not know that all this is
simply the part of a great game which is being played
with all odds on the side of Germany and only despera-
Yotj Must Play Some Games Desperately 11
tion on the side of France. The French soldiers do not
know that this is a grand strategic move which is to
catch Germany asleep unless she shall be wise enough to
keep her eyes wide open. Finally, the order to 44Halt"
is flashed to the French front. Then Joffre wires his im¬
mortal command to his beloved Generals: i' Right about
and face the Germans. Wait until they cross the Marne.
Stand dead still and permit yourselves to be shot to pieces
but do not give one inch. France expects every man to
play the game; to die but never to yield.'' The telegram
sets the French army on fire but the soldiers subdue their
enthusiasm and patiently wait until the Germans are
across the river. Then comes the order to fight and
everybody knows what happened. Then began those aw¬
ful French 75s to speak with an eloquence which amazed
the world. Then began that French Infantry to pepper
the swollen pride of Germany. Then did Germany begin
to fall back further and further until France with her Al¬
lies had pushed her across the border where she shall
probably remain for all time to come. It was a game
played in desperation but won in undying glory.
* **********
Let us now, for the time, roll back the curtain of the
past 480 years before Christ, and take our stand for a
moment upon the little mountain of Oeta that stands
guard over the immortal pass of Thermopylae.
Xerxes of Persia, has made himself monarch of all he
surveys. His kingdom is the richest and most powerful
empire on the earth. All nations tremble at the very
mention of his name—all except the insolent Greeks,
whom he is at last resolved to punish and destroy. So he
raises the greatest army that the world ever saw and be¬
gins to move towards Greece. As we stand here upon
Mount Oeta we can see that mighty host moving slowly
down across Macedonia and Thessally, like a dark, men¬
acing cloud. Here they come expecting to make short
work of Greece, impatient for the conflict which they
know will be as nothing.
12 You Mut Play Some Games Desperately
Down there below us stand a handful of Greeks—700
Thespians and 300 Spartans, just a thousand in all, under
the bravest captain that ever wore a sword, the immortal
Leonidas.
On come the Persians. Detachment after detachment
is thrown back. Day after day they endeavor to push the
handful of Greeks out of the pass. Xerxes loses patience
and sends a picked company of his best soldiers to clear
the Pass. They fare no better than the rest. Very suc¬
cessfully this little handful of men is holding back the
greatest army the world has ever seen. But finally some
traitor sells a secret to the Persians by which they learn
of a path over the mountain. During the night a
company is sent over this path, and on the morrow the
brave Greeks find themselves facing the Persians both to
the North and to the South. Finally, the little band of
immortals is cut down to a man, yet history is compelled
to admit that Thermopylae was not a victory for the Per-.
sians, but a victory for the Greeks, and that although
Xerxes passed on over the bodies of that gallant thou¬
sand to meet his doom at Salamis, he must have thought,
as he turned his face toward Persia, a broken, disillu¬
sioned monarch—he must have remembered, as he again
passed through Thermopylae that his real defeat was not
at Salamis but at the hands of Leonidas at Thermopylae
upon the very threshold of Greece.
###########
These instances I have mentioned, have come from
profane history but they illustrate well the point at hand.
The best illustrations, however, come from sacred his¬
tory because the greatest victories of the world have been
the spiritual victories. There have ever been great bat¬
tles between the powers of darkness and the powers of
light. In this realm it would appear that the greatest
lighter of all time is the Apostle Paul. The early Chris¬
tian church found itself upon very peculiar ground.
Rome was frowning against the new religion, Greece was
sneering at it, the Jews, the Scribes and Pharisees were
You Must Play Some Games Desperately 13
anything but friendly. There was a time when the whole
future of Christianity seemed to depend upon one
puny little man and that man was the Apostle Paul. But
St. Paul was to the Christian religion what Leonidas was
to the Greeks. Single-handed, he faced the world; nor has
Cyrus, or Alexander, or Hannibal, or Xerxes, or Napo¬
leon, or Grant, or Joffre, or Foch, if you please, ever
flashed to the soldiers along the line any such inspiring
and thrilling messages as Paul sent to the Christians of
the early church. No orator ever hurled at the Powers
that be more dreadful bombshells of eloquence and de¬
fiance than the fearless Paul flung into the very teeth of
the most powerful men of his time. After hearing Paul
preach and after reading his letters, the early Christians
were more than willing to stand their ground and be shot
to pieces before yielding one inch. And as a result of
Paul's teaching we find scores of men and women all
down through history who willingly mounted the scaf¬
fold or walked into the flames but would not renounce the
faith.
Listen to Paul in those moving sentences which close
the 8th chapter of his letter to the Romans:
" Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: For thy
sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as
sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through him that loved us. For
I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
m## ********
Now, to come back where we started and apply our il¬
lustrations, the Negro Race in America finds itself in
the position of the handful of Greeks at the Pass of Ther¬
mopylae; in the position of the early Christian church.
14 You Mut Play Some Games Desperately
On the one side we are ten millions strong. Arrayed
against us along economic, social and racial lines is a
host of near on to one hundred millions. The competition
we meet is sharpened to keenness upon the whetstone of
Prejudice. White America claims to be friendly and ap¬
parently is. But deep beneath the surface we may dis¬
cover a grim determination on the part of White America
to hold our progress within well defined limits. Finan¬
cially, we are proscribed; educationally, we are pro¬
scribed; in numbers we are outcounted ten to one. All
the advantage is against us; all the odds are against us;
all the strategic points are held by the opposition; and
we face the enemy from every point of the compass.
All the power of platform, legislature, and press can be
and at times has been arrayed against us. Nay, Leonidas
at the Pass of Thermopylae was not in a more desperate
position than the American Negro struggling to hold his
race identity and consciousness in a country that is in¬
different when it is not unfriendly.
Yet, we want to win. All our sacrifices of the past
have been freely made in the hope that we may win; in
the firm belief that we shall win. All our sufferings have
been cheerfully endured; the galling sun that smote our
blistered backs, the burning sands that scorched our
weary feet and the stony paths that marked our way in
blood—all these will be forgotten if we can only feel that
we shall win. Well, there is but one recourse, and that
is we must play the game desperately, or else we shall
lose. No half hearted doings here; no lukewarm enthu¬
siasm; no indifferent fighting. Now is the time for men
who know how to plan a victorious line of retreat as well
as a victorious line of advance.
You students of English history will remember that
once on a time a Jew named Disraeli by skillful political
strategy made himself the Prime Minister of Great
Britain and thereby became for the time the foremost
man in the world. But his skillful manipulation was as
nothing compared to the applied brain power and shrewd
You Must Play Some Games Desperately 15
discernment which the American Negro must use in win¬
ning the game which he has elected to win in this coun¬
try.
It must be and is admitted that the A. M. E. Church
has assumed both nominally and substantially, the lead¬
ership of the Negro race. Our Bishops are interviewed
and consulted upon nearly every question of racial im¬
portance. This is a great honor, but it is also a great re¬
sponsibility. Directly to the A. M. E. Church must be
ascribed the determination to remain loyal and true to
Africa. Some shortsighted leaders have advised us to
cut loose from the Fatherland and try to believe that we
are to be forever identified with this country. That may
be the course which events will take, but somehow I feel
that God's plan is to keep us here until we are intellec¬
tually the equal of any white race and then move us to
Africa, there to build upon that rich continent the great¬
est empire the world will ever see.
The game is before you. The odds are against you
even as they were against Roosevelt and Lincoln and
Leonidas and St. Paul. But you must play to win. Ev¬
erything depends upon that. The welfare of our race
in America as well as Africa through all the years of the
future depend upon how; well you play the game today.
Therefore you must win; you cannot afford to lose.
In the playing of this game, we must pass through the
darkness, through the storm and will be subjected to all
kinds of indignities, but I beg you, my brethren, to let the
sentiment expressed by William Ernest Henley in his
"Invictus" be yours, in which he says:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of Circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
You Mtjt Play Some Games Desperately
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
THE MINISTER'S BUSINESS IS TO FOLLOW JESUS
Annual address delivered to the West Texas Con¬
ference of the A. M. E. Church (47th Session) at
Sealy, Texas, November 16, 1921, by Bishop William
D. Johnson
A very large portion of the so-called love of this world
is of the irregular, illicit and shameful kind. All moral
codes (our own included) encourage that kind of love
which can be openly confessed, but frown upon that
which is ashamed of itself; which cannot show itself ex¬
cept in shameful secrecy or under the cover of darkness.
We see the legitimate affections in the home openly con¬
fessed between husband and wife, parent and child. We
see them in the social life between pure-minded lad and
maid. But there are other affections which the church,
the law and common decency frown upon because they
dare not come into the open; dare not show themselves in
the light of day. These latter kinds of affection always
bring about complications—most often serious and tragic
consequences. l
The story is told of an English woman who for some
time had been encouraging the attentions of her hus¬
band's nephew. The husband was vaguely suspicious of
this clandestine correspondence but having no direct
proof remained discreetly silent. Finally, his worse sus¬
picions were all but realized. The nephew in the case
hastily hid himself in a tiny alcove scarcely large enough
to hold a man. Two curtains draped over this hole-in-
the-wall was his only protection.
Coming in, the husband asked his wife if she were
18 The Minister's Business is to Follow Jesus
alone. '4Quite alone" was the sweetly innocent reply
which the lady made. When told that the voice of a man
had been heard, the lady said that it must have been pure
fancy as she was quite alone.
But the husband knew what he knew. He knew that a
man was hiding behind the curtains of that alcove, so in
his heart he planned a deliberate but most horrible re¬
venge. He rang for a servant. There were masons and
plasterers at work repairing a certain wall of the man¬
sion and for these the servant was instantly sent. When
they came the master of the house explained in a few
words what he wanted done. "I have valuable records
in that alcove," he said. '1 Bring mortar and brick and
seal up that opening entire, so that my records may for¬
ever be safe." The workmen were but a few minutes in
finishing the job. It was scarcely finished, however,
when the guilty wife fell dead in a fit of remorse. In¬
ward grief at the murder she was being forced to look
upon with her own eyes, bitter anguish of soul over her
moral inability to speak one word, crushing sorrow over
a conscious responsibility for the whole matter burst her
heart and killed her.
Beware of that loyalty and that love of which you are
ashamed. It usually ends in remorse, tragedy, disgrace
and death. The Bible denounces it, the church frowns
upon it and the courts of justice visit the punishment of
the laws upon it. I have thus far had reference to tem¬
poral love—the love of this world. But in the spiritual
world loyalty and love may be the cause of still greater
tragedy and remorse when it is ashamed of itself by rea¬
son of being secretly tied to any of those things not pleas¬
ing in the sight of God.
There is every reason to believe that Peter loved
Christ. It is admitted that if Christ had a favorite
among the disciples it was Peter. Peter, we believe, to
have been the one who drew a sword and cut off the ear
of one of those who came to help arrest Christ in Gethse-
mane. Peter was the rock upon which the Church was
The Ministek's Business is to Follow Jesus 19
to be built in the 16th chapter of Matthew. In John 21-15
we find a touchingly divine appeal from the risen Christ,
that Peter should feed the lambs and sheep.
Yet, when things were going bad with Christ, when
He had been arrested and was being led away, Peter was
afraid to come directly, but followed afar off. And dur¬
ing the trial when the world seemed to have turned
against Christ, when He stood before the bar alone and
silent. Peter, for the time ashamed and afraid of his
human love for Christ, swore at last that he knew noth¬
ing about the man at all.
Of course, Peter bitterly repented of his denial of the
Lord and measured up to every expectation when finally
he took upon himself the great task of spreading the
Gospel. But there are many modern-day Peters who are
ashamed of Christ and are never sorry; who deny the
Lord and never repent; or who are bound to the world
by some secret tie, some dark relation which they dare
not let the light of truth shine upon.
The minister's business is to follow Jesus. This is an
undeniable fact evident on the face of it; and it would
seem, at first blush, that an admonition on my part, to
our ministers on this subject would be needless. But
with closer second study, we get a glimpse of what may
constitute a grave charge, not only against our particu¬
lar ministers, but the Christian ministry as a whole.
The world with overwhelming force is sweeping into
idolatry as fast as the wheels of time can turn. The peo¬
ple of this generation are turning away from God. The
combined forces of the World, the Flesh and the Devil
are rallying for an overwhelming attack upon the citadel
of Christanity. We have plunged ourselves into an at¬
mosphere of materialism and greed. The nations are
sinking to a plane of Godlessness, which, to students of
religious history, is most appalling. Immorality has
reached a stage which forces the prophet to stand aghast.
The indiscriminate love, the unbridled and consuming
desire of money, luxury, power—these constitute the all-
20 The Minister's Business is to Follow Jebtxs
absorbing passion of the day. Our men are money-mad;
our women are fashion-mad; sinful pleasure has become
the chief diversion of the day; jealousy and envy, the
forerunners of suspicion and hate, are growing between
group and group, race and race, country and country.
Christ is being relegated. God is being forgotten. The
soul is being dwarfed. The heart is being impoverished.
The old time religion, the prayer-meeting, the old Meth¬
odist institution of class-meeting, the still older institu¬
tion of the family altar with the strong sturdy charac¬
ter that went along with it—all these things have be¬
come the laughing stocks of our time.
All those old-fashioned mothers who raised the old-
fashioned daughters, the warp and woof of whose moral
fibre withstood the ravages of time—where are they?
The old-fashioned fathers who blazed the trail in which
their sons were proud to follow—where are they!
Surely the women we see now parading the streets with
a lack of apparel, bordering dangerously on indecency,
are not the daughters of those mothers. Surely the boys
we see out midnight joy-riding are not the sons of those
fathers. But what other sons and daughters can they
be? God forbid that the world shall long continue to
plunge headlong into the eternal night of idolatry.
The other day they pulled down a church in a certain
city of my home state and put a bank in its place. They
pulled down another and put an automobile factory in
its place. They pulled down another and put a big store
in its place. Literally and practically that kind of thing
may be all right. As a matter of fact, I am willing to
admit that banks and stores would do far more good on
the same ground than many of the so-called fine churches
of the world. But it is the spirit of the thing that makes
me anxious for the future of Christianity. I find that
this spirit is ramifying the mind and heart of the people.
The world is becoming more and more inclined to pull
down God's temples and rear the images and altars of
Mammon in their stead.
The Minister's Business is to Follow Jesus 21
Button hole the average young man you meet any¬
where—I don't mean white man nor black man; I mean
any young man. Let him talk. He can tell you the name
of every, or nearly every, major league baseball player
(as they call it) with hundreds of details of record and
salary and a thousand and one of the worthless facts that
have grown out of the commercializing of a once healthy
and harmless sport. Not only can our young man name
all these frightfully overpaid major leaguers but can re¬
cite their peculiarities, personal eccentricities and indi¬
vidual idiosyncracies. Ask the same young man to
name the twelve disciples of Christ. Scarcely one in a
thousand can do it. They know all about *' Babe Ruth.''
They've forgotten most they ever knew about another
Babe, the mention of whose name is almost a desecration
in this connection, but a knowledge of Whom is far more
important than that of any "Babe Ruth" that ever can
have lived. These young men could read yon Ty Cobb's
contract verbatim from memory. They would stumble
and break their necks over the simple Beatitudes, if they
ever knew them at all.
Take the scholars from the schools, whether white or
black, yellow or brown, and notice, if you will, how they
all are sweeping into infidelity and religious indiffer¬
ence. Probably it has never occurred to most of you to
think very seriously on these things, but for years and
years they have been painfully evident to me. Notice
with what avidity the precepts of the great materialists
are devoured by these eager young infidels, and notice at
the same time, what small use they have for the Bible.
I am unalterably opposed to any lukewarm, half-way
attitude toward the Bible. I don't believe that the read¬
ing and study of it should be reduced to a ceremony. I
believe that it should either be kicked out as a gigantic
fraud or else taken up with an interest commensurate
with its importance, for if it is important, at all, it is in
the fact that it contains the central fact of all creation.
Stand and look for a moment at the diversions of our
22 The Minister's Business is to Follow Jesus
young people in the way of social pleasures. Look at the
unholy modern dance and see how it is sweeping the
young people of all races into an immoral hell. From
north, south, east and west there arises a wail of broken¬
hearted parents over the murdered morals of their
daughters. There is no sadder gloom (not even death
itself) than the pall of grief that settles down over the
home where the virtuous daughter has been cast down
from her high estate to be covered with the dust of
shame. Religious editors, moralists, college presidents
and social workers, the country over are crying to the
church to assume a more rigid attitude on this subject.
The matron of one college in America has gone so far
as to say that her school will henceforth waive all re¬
sponsibility for the moral behaviour of young women
whose parents permit them to practice the modern dance.
There is a natural love of rhythm in the human soul
put there by the Creator. Nature is herself full of
rhythm, from a singing bird to the "music of the
spheres"; from a trembling leaf to a swaying world;
from a dancing wave to a swinging universe. The
rhythm of language is poetry. The rhythm of sound is
music. There can be and is a harmless rhythm of hu¬
man movement often seen in the innocent play of chil¬
dren. But this thing which is vulgarly known as "Jazz"
is a modern abomination which has been the direct cause
of more moral death than any social agency in history.
It is a trap-door which has sent more young people to
destruction than all the other evil influences put together.
Even this is a part of the great avalanche which is sweep¬
ing the nation to its moral doom.
Of late, we have had a strong searchlight turned upon
the social activities of a large group of people who make
the moving pictures that are daily shown in the thou¬
sands of moving picture houses in this country. And we
have been sickened with the nausea which this search¬
light discovered. For years and years certain obscure
preachers and moralists made more obscure by blinding
The Minister's Business is to Follow Jesus 23
smoke screens, thrown up by powerful money syndicates
—I say certain modest men and women have been crying
out against the frightful effect which certain classes of
moving pictures were having upon the young people of
this day. They went on to say that the private lives of
most of the movie people were grossly immoral and the
kind of pictures they took most pleasure in making was
of a nature to drag the young folks down. Many news¬
papers laughed at the idea. Big writers were paid a dol¬
lar a word to say that the whole thing was a lie on the
face of it. Movie people were all perfect ladies and gen¬
tlemen and regular going, amen-corner members of the
church. Then we see a group of these people gather in
a private apartment to drink liquor and celebrate. There
is a tragic and shameful death. The curtain is thrown
back and our hearts are sickened with what our eyes be¬
hold.
Where are the churches? They're all right here
crowded every Sunday with congregations larger than
ever. Where are the preachers? They are all right here
preaching every Sunday to crowded churches white and
black. Well, how can the gods of Mammon be rearing
their dreadful heads? How can materialism be advanc¬
ing with such rapid strides ? How can Infidelity be gain¬
ing so much ground? How can this generation be grow¬
ing so immoral? How can the world be sweeping into
idolatry as fast as the wheels of time can move ? Simply
this: The Christian ministry, the country over, the
world over, is losing its grip upon the people because it
is not alive to its main duty: the duty of following Jesus.
The preachers of today (too many of them) are endeavor¬
ing to make terms with the Devil on too many points.
They are condoning too many things; they are winking
things; they are permitting too many things. Instead of
at too many things; they are conniving at too many
going out with sword in hand to fight the wild beasts of
evil to the death, they are endeavoring to tame them, for¬
getting that the only way to tame them is to kill them.
24 The Minister's Business is to Follow Jesus
Connive, condone and temporize with the Devil if you
want to and presently he will devour you.
Follow Jesus. That's your business. Don't be con-
nivingly silent when the world endeavors to put Mam¬
mon first and God next. Don't be so significantly silent
when the materialists endeavor to explain away the
reality of Christ. Don't be so silent when Infidelity
raises its strident voice. Don't be so silent or so quick
to smile when Immorality smiles her dangerous smile.
Fight to the death all the machinations of the arch enemy
of God. Live so blameless before men that your very life
will speak eloquently for Christ.
We shall do well to get back to the spirit of St. Paul.
In his epistle to the Apostle Titus, 2:7, he (Paul) enjoins
him: "In all things showing thyself a pattern of good
works." And in 2nd Corinthians 6:3. "Giving no oc¬
casion of stumbling in anything that our ministration
be not blamed." In 5:20 of the same letter he says: "We
are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ."
The main thing was that Paul did not want a careless
ministry. He well foresaw into what state such a min¬
istry would bring the church and the world.
Get back into the footsteps of Christ. Let your loyalty
to him be unapproachable. Openly confess him without
shame. Cut every secret tie that binds you to any inter¬
est whatsoever contrary to the interest of Christianity.
One all absorbing thought fills the hearts of the serious
minded Christians of today. How can the world be
halted in its mad career toward the destruction which we
know must come? Nothing is too dreadful to happen to
this world unless the nations shall turn and repent. But
mainly I tell you that there is no real hope until the
Christian ministry shall be newly consecrated to the
work of Christ; shall cease to be ashamed of Him and
shall follow more closely, more earnestly and more pray¬
erfully in His footsteps and live more constantly under
the shadow of His cross.
DELVING FOR BURIED TREASURE
Annual address delivered to the Southwest Texas
Conference of the A. M. E. Church (11th Session) at
Weimar, Texas, November 2, 1921, by Bishop William
D. Johnson.
In one respect, nature reminds me of the old-fashioned
pirates. In olden days before the great powers fell upon
the idea of putting police ships upon the ocean, corsairs
and pirates used to infest the high seas, much as high¬
waymen do our streets today. And whenever they made
a good haul they buried their treasure—their gold and
their silver—in little out of the way places, sometimes
along lonely shores, sometimes in deep valleys, some¬
times on little islands that never appeared in the geogra¬
phical surveys of the ocean, sometimes in grave-yards
or in dark caves on the further side of savage, inaccessi¬
ble mountains.
In turn, almost everything we get from nature which
has any great value, we must search to find; we must
delve and dig to obtain.
In my recent trip to England where I had the honor of
being in attendance upon the Ecumenical Conference of
the Methodist churches of the world, I had those deeper
thrills which come to one who finds himself for the first
time in the world's largest city. The endless streets and
buildings, the succession of historical edifices, the end¬
less streams and swarms and armies of people which
make London one of the wonders of the modern world
can hardly be pictured by the imagination. But the su¬
preme thrill came to me before I had seen London—it
26 Delving For Buried Treasure
came to me as I looked upon the vast Atlantic ocean, the
unconquered and unconquerable sea. And when night
had settled down and darkness covered the face of the
deep, my thoughts were turned upon the good ship which
bore us as on wings of might farther and farther away
to where it seems God only and watery wastes abide.
Every minute I could feel the throb, throb, throb of the
great engines as they pushed us on across the sea. How
one shudders when one thinks that in places the watery
grave beneath is countless fathoms deep. How precious
becomes the titanic engines whose mighty arms are push¬
ing us on across the sea. How precious is the coal in
whose rich veins God has stored the power to drive our
good ship in her winning fight against the restless, ever-
rolling waves.
Where did this precious iron and coal come from? It
came out of the bowels of the earth where men have dig¬
ged down after it, brought it out, smelted the iron, re¬
fined it, hammered it, moulded it into engines which em-
bued with the power of steam, pull the stately ships over
the limitless wastes of water.
We have seen expeditions fitted out that went into the
frozen snows of Alaska, the burning sands of the desert
and the mountains of California to dig for gold. All the
precious treasures of the world were once hidden away
in the bowels of the earth where they would be until this
day if some treasure seeker had not felt called upon to
seek them out and dig them up.
The greatest treasure-seekers of all, however, are not
the ones who dig for gold in the earth but those who dig
out the treasures of the soul.
Every human soul carries, buried in its depth, treas¬
ures untold—nay, the wealth of the Indies—treasures of
love, treasures of intellectual powers, treasures of elo¬
quence, treasures of dynamic power, treasures of song,
treasures of beauty, treasures of enraptured thought.
There is a very simple word that is misunderstood by
more people than any other word in the language and
Delving Fob Bubied Tbeasube 27
that simple word is " educate.'' The word 41 educate"
does not mean the cramming of a vast amount of esoteric
facts into the mind of a human being. No, to educate,
means to do just the opposite thing. It means to draw
out, pull out, fetch out, dig out the treasures, the capaci¬
ties, the powers, the gifts that are already in the mind.
Gold in the ground has no value except potential. Iron
in the ground will not serve us in the million and one
forms which civilization requires. A diamond in the
rough would no more grace a king's crown than the
shapeless stone which one careless boy throws at an¬
other. Gold has no value until it has been dug out and
refined; iron has no value until it has been dug out and
smelted; and likewise the gifts of the human soul have
no value until they have been dug out and refined.
Nature has not been partial with her gifts. Treasure
lies buried in the hearts of all races alike. God is no re¬
specter of persons.
Sometimes in passing along the streets of a city, I see
a medicine man crying off his fake medicines and snake
oils. And to hold the crowd he has employed a group of
colored boys who have the gift of drawing the most
fetching sounds and harmonies from various kinds of
instruments. First, I see there a fiddler. You could
scarcely call him a violinist. He could hardly spell the
word, much less tell you a history of the wonderful in¬
strument he plays. He could not tell you the name of
one single great violinist in the world. He probably
never heard the name of one called. Written music?
He couldn't tell you the difference between a note and a
fly-speck. All he knows is to pat his foot and sing
snatches of songs, sway from side to side and make his
fiddle almost talk and moan and cry and laugh. Between
him and the great masters of the violin is a space that
could not be covered in a life time; between his technique
and the icy perfection of the masters are many, many
weary miles of uphill travel. His wages are hardly more
than a couple of dollars a day while the masters are often
28 Delving For Buried Treasure
paid a couple of thousands for a single night. Yet, do
not for a moment think that there is any fundamental
difference between these two musicians. Nature has put
the same gifts into the souls of both of them. One gets
two dollars a day and the other gets two thousand a day.
But it is because the gift in one remained just as nature
placed it, while the gift in the other was dug out, polish¬
ed and refined.
And you might go down the whole line of ragged, un¬
cultured musicians and the comparison would hold good.
Listen to them, these players who scarcely draw over
fifteen dollars a day altogether and then go and pay five
to ten dollars to hear the big orchestras of America and
Europe. At first blush you will think nature has been
unfair. No. It is simply that on the one hand some
treasure seeker, some treasure digger has gone in and
dug out the gifts, polished them, beautified them, re¬
fined them and so you must pay ten dollars for the priv¬
ilege of listening to them. On the other hand the gifts
have remained crude and unsought. So you can hear
them free standing up on the street with low comedy
thrown in for good measure.
Whatever you may want that is of value, you must
strive for it. Whatever of value man has taken from na¬
ture he has had to fight for it. The average man goes
out and looks at the starry firmament and comes away
with the impression that the sky is full of candle lights.
But the treasure digger takes his mighty telescope and
digs deep, millions, billions, nay, trillions of miles into
the vast depths of space; he gives names to the valleys
of the moon; he explores the spots on the sun; he discerns
the canals on Mars; notes the phases of the beautiful
Venus; leaps on out to mighty Jupiter, hurtling on his
billion mile course around the sun balancing his five
moons about him like lords in waiting around his throne.
Nor does the astronomical digger yet cease. He plunges
on farther out to where pale Neptune sails upon his icy
wings in space beyond the reach of mortal sight, on the
Delving Foe Buried Treasure 29
very outskirts of this system of solar worlds. Ah! but
our treasure seeker is only started. Across measureless,
trackless space he makes his way to those gigantic
worlds whose size and orbits are beyond the powers of
human mind to comprehend. He chases those runaway,
erratic worlds called comets, forces the stars to give up
their secrets, foretells to the second each eclipse of the
sun and moon for thousands of years to come.
Take the digger into other fields of science. Take the
mysterious experiments of Marconi, whereby we now
speak in natural voice around the world. What grander
treasure has man dug out of nature's heart of hearts than
the secret by which we may speak one to another thou¬
sands of miles away without the sign of wire or medium
save the invisible wires of ether, that fine entity of na¬
ture which all but stands on the borderland of spirit.
This wireless telegraphy is the greatest marvel of the
age. On my recent trip to England, it impressed me
next to God's great ocean itself. As our good ship made
its way across the deep blue sea a feeling of loneliness
and isolation crept over me which words cannot describe.
The world seemed to have turned to water—water and
sky; and the moon and stars seemed closer to me ihan
my friends far away. What more wonderful thing can
you imagine than the messages which came by wireless
sometimes in the dead of night, linking us with the world
we knew; telling us what news there was three days
after we left New York; telling of things that were hap¬
pening in London three days before we had sighted the
white cliffs of the European coast.
We know history to be one of the most valuable and
interesting studies which engages the mind of man. Yet
whole ages of history has had to be dug up out of the
ground and not the least interesting of those diggers of
buried treasure gre those zealous enthusiasts who have
dug up the cities of antiquity. We now know that the
Troy of which old Homer sang was not a myth, was not
a fable, was an actual city because it has been dug up
30 Delving For Buried Treasure
by the famous archaeologist, Schliemann, who linked his
name to an undying glory, second only, perhaps, to that
of the immortal bard himself. The opening lines of the
matchless poem:
4 4 Achilles wrath to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess sing;
That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign,
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain,"
that poem is no longer a myth but a reality through a
digger after buried treasure.
The Rosetta Stone, whose fortune treasure diggers un¬
locked twelve centuries of Egyptian history was not
more important than recent excavations in Africa which
according to scholars prove that Africa once boasted the
world's greatest civilization; and at a time when the
present day Germans were nothing but the wildest sav¬
ages, treasure diggers have proven that Africa and the
Negro of Africa had already developed a proud civliza-
tion all their own.
The Anglo-Saxon race loves to claim as next of kin,
or distant kin, every great civilization that has so far
made up the history of the past. All these claims are
made to count for naught by archaeological data of re¬
cent years. Many things go to prove that the Negro must
have developed somewhere in Africa a high culture in
ancient times. And if that be a fact, then of a truth there
must be buried in the fallow ground of the Negro's soul
untold spiritual wealth which only needs the treasure
digger to come and uncover it to the world.
Once, in the State of Pennsylvania, there was a dairy¬
man who complained that he always had much trouble in
trying to water his cows out of the only branch that ran
across his pasture. He said there was always a dark
scum on the water which the cows did not like and would
not drink. He said he was growing poorer and poorer
each day trying to make his cows pay for what they ate.
Ah! if this poor dairyman had only known that he was
all the while sitting over a gold mine. He tried to sell
Delving For Buried Treasure 31
his dairy farm. Nobody wanted it. He tried to all but
give his cows away. Nobody wanted the poor things.
Finally when he felt that he would hardly be able to feed
himself, or his cows one day longer, a prospector hap¬
pened to come by. When this prospector saw the cows
sniffing at the water and refusing to drink; when he saw
the scum on the water he knew what he had found. He
sought out the dairyman and was on the verge of offering
him five thousand dollars for his farm, when the dairy¬
man in his anxiety, took the words out of his mouth and
asked him if he would like to buy his farm for one thou¬
sand dollars. The trade was instantly made and the
dairyman secretly smiled, thinking that he had not only
made a good trade but that he had cheated the stranger.
Next day the stranger rigged up a crane and began bor¬
ing for oil. In a short while he was a millionaire.
I know that our ministers ofttimes grow despondent
over the seeming backwardness of our people. Some¬
times I know you feel like the Pennsylvania dairyman,
that all your work is useless, unappreciated and thrown
away. The bigotry, crass ignorance and superstition
that we meet with in dealing with our people tempt us
to believe that they represent an intellectual desert, a
moral wilderness, a spiritual waste. I know how you
feel when you look upon the work of other races smiling
against the sun, like great cultivated fields. I know that
you feel discouraged and think that your work is vain.
But all we need is the right faith and the right enthu¬
siasm.
Dig away, morning, noon and night, year in and year
out. The soul of this race is rich in fine gold, and we
shall reach it, if we dig away, bore away, blast away.
It is the preacher's prerogative to keep the fires of
enthusiasm burning; it is his duty to daily urge us on
in this work of racial self-development. He should con¬
stantly remind us that in our own souls lie buried rich
treasures for which the world is waiting—rich treasures
of faith, devotion and love, moral and intellectual power.
32 Delving For Buried Treasure
Out of this black race, I expect to see upstanding and
colossal figures come forth which shall command the ad¬
miration and attention of the world. I expect to see
orators who shall charm, amaze and convince the world.
I expect to see poets evolved and developed who shall
sing as never poet sang before; nay, in my mind's eye, I
can see the advent of the black Shakespeare, if we shall
only have ears to hear and eyes to see him when he shall
appear; I see writers and statesmen who shall challenge
the admiration of the nations by consummate art, bril¬
liant argument and unanswerable logic. I see coming
musicians with harmonious originality; I see a galaxy
of doctors and scholars and thinkers, not of the mediocre
stamp but upstanding world figures like Hannibal, Tous-
saint L 'Overture, Fred Douglas, Daniel A. Payne, Henry
McNeil Turner and Du Bois.
Other races have all kinds of leaders to seek out their
treasures, to dig out their spiritual gold, to develop their
spiritual resources. Among our people this must be done
by the Christian ministry. Upon you, my brethren, rests
both the responsibility and the duty. I charge you then
to look well to your duty. If the spiritual gold of our
race is left buried in the crude, unpolished state, the re¬
sponsibility for the neglect will be upon our heads. But
if it is dug out and refined and burnished it will be placed
to our undying glory by the Righteous Judge of all the
earth.
NO PLACE IN OUR RANKS FOR A JUDAS
OR A SIMON
Annual address delivered to the Northwest Texas
Conference of the A .M .E. Church (43d Session) at
Athens Texas, November 30, 1921, by Bishop William
D. Johnson.
If I were called upon to name the one great besetting
sin of the church today, I could do it in one word: Hypo¬
crisy. If I were called upon to name the deathly chill
that is creeping stealthily through the veins, on through
the body to the very heart of the church itself, I could do
it in one word: Formality. If I were asked to name the
one great need of the church today, I could do it in one
word: Sincerity. We want sincere love, sincere faith,
sincere religion, sincere Christianity. If the universal
Christian church could only get back to these landmarks,
the most of our problems would be solved.
As I read history I am astonished at the amount of
hypocrisy that is palmed off as a record of events as they
were. You can scarcely read any one historian in all
literature and get the actual truth of things. Always
there is something kept back or put forward in a manner
out of proportion to its importance. The great diplomats
of the world, some of the so-called great statesmen and
many so-called great patriots have been found to be arch
schemers and prince of liars. Said one great writer, "0
consistency, thou art a jewel." He might have better
said, "0 Sincerity, thou art a jewel—thou art a rare
jewel; nay, thou art the rarest jewel."
Take the trouble this country is having in the matter
of Prohibition. What is the trouble? Simply one word:
34 No Place in Our Ranks For a Judas or a Simon
Hypocrisy. Thousands of men voted to send liquor out
of the country and yet, today if the truth were known,
their cellars would be found to contain barrels and bar¬
rels of liquor.
What politician that you know of, can you afford to be¬
lieve? What's the matter 1 Hypocrisy. Indeed, it is
now the hardest thing on earth to find a man, who when
he is in office will do the things he promised to do when
he was trying to get into office or who will do the right
thing if it will cause him to lose his job. "Mr. Clay,"
said some of his friends,'i You cannot afford to take such
and such a position in this matter, for if you do it will
ruin your chances for the presidency." Whereupon,
Henry Clay, the great statesman, made a reply touching
the heights of sublimity: "I'd rather be right than
President.''
I blame the church for setting the example of hypo¬
crisy in the world. The enemies of Christianity claim
not to believe in the church. Yet every time that they
have found an inconsistency in us, here they come point¬
ing the finger of scorn. You will remember that they
brought the woman to Christ demanding that she should
be stoned. Christ used what we now call the Third De¬
gree on those hypocrites. He spoke a few well placed
words which cut into their hearts like steam drills, then
he turned and wrote upon the ground. When he looked
up the two were by themselves. But too often, nowadays,
the dirty linen of the church is held up in scorn to the
world and sincere believers are forced to hang their
heads in shame. The result is that when worldly men find
that so many apparent Christians practice hypocrisy
they of the world begin to practice it also. When poli¬
ticians and diplomats and statesmen of this world find
high churchmen saying,'' Lord, Lord is it I ?" at one time
and then selling the Lord for twenty pieces of silver at
another, they do not mind declaring on the stump that
they are ready to die for their country and then later be
quite as ready to sell their country for a job.
No Place in Our Ranks For a Judas or a Simon 35
The greatest enemy of ail army is not always the op¬
posing force; it is often the traitor, the Judas, the false
brother inside the door, the faithless neighbor in the com¬
munity, the enemy within the gates.
We have lately been given a very convincing proof of
what it means to have in our own country people who
have sworn allegiance to the flag with their mouths but
who in their hearts have already sworn eternal enmity
to the flag.
What the spy and trator is to the nation, the hypo¬
crite is to the church. What treachery is to the army, in¬
sincerity is to religion.
We prepare to make a raid on the Devil's stronghold.
We charge his breastworks and find ourselves out-ma¬
neuvered, checkmated and out-generaled. Why? The
Devil has been informed beforehand of all we meant to
do. So when we make our charge the Devil is waiting
and ready. In certain communities, the law and order
forces are expending herculean energy in the effort to in¬
tercept bootlegggers and smugglers. What is the trou¬
ble? Simply this: certain policemen, working for the
city, wearing uniform and badge, are really working in
unison with the criminal element and the crooks of the
underworld. They are paid by the city, by the forces of
decency and at the same time they are collecting even
more money from the gambling dens and houses of ill-
fame. So when the spectacular raids are made for news¬
paper and publicity effect, the blind tigers have been
given plenty of time and warning so they merely hold up
their clean faces and smile. There's a traitor somewhere.
Somebody has passed down the word. In a certain city
of my home state, a man of our race recently swore in
court that he had been paying two hundred dollars per
week for police protection in running a blind tiger. And
he said that the reason the break came was that the po¬
lice raised their services to two hundred and fifty dol¬
lars per week.
And very often the police forget and begin to charge
36 No Place in Our Banks For a Jubas or a Simon
too much for their services. There is a quarrel. A
threat is made to expose the whole thing. Then we see
or hear of a mysterious murder like that of that gambler
in New York, who threatened to tell all he knew on the
Chief of Police, which Chief, we remember, was later
sent to the electric chair.
You sometimes hear worldly people remarking that
such and such an amen-corner-brother drank liquor as
long as he was able to order it from the large cities and
now buys it from whatever hip-pocket bar-room he can
find. When certain members are called on to pray in
many of our churches the worldly-minded can be seen
smiling among themselves and to one another as they
formally bow their heads. "Why is this? Hypocrisy in
action.
It was reserved for St. Matthew in the 26th chapter of
his gospel to paint in a few masterly strokes the world's
greatest hypocrite, Judas, who betrayed our Saviour
with a kiss. There is not a more tragic passage in all
sacred writ than that which describes Judas coming up
with a lie on his face and kissing our Saviour, the Man
of Sorrow, born to suffer and to die. And just as Cain
has had his followers and doubles throughout history,
so has Judas had his counterparts in all nations, races,
governments and armies until now even the church is
filled up with men and women who in other ways would
and do sell the Lord for much less than twenty pieces of
silver. You sell the Lord when you give the world an op¬
portunity to laugh at the church through your own dou¬
ble dealing and hypocrisy. You sell the Lord when you
show such marked insincerity in your Christianity. You
sell the Lord when you make your whining pretention to
be what you know you are not. You sell the Lord when
you unblushingly practice such gross deception. You
sell the Lord when you affect such pharisaical sancti¬
moniousness. You sell the Lord when you let the world
find out that one may remain in the church on the one
hand and yet deal with the Devil on the other.
No Place in Our Ranks Fob a Judas ob a Simon 37
Now, there would not be so much cause for anxiety on
this subject if it were not that hypocrisy and formality
are so prevalent in the church. The Protestant Church
broke away from the old Roman Catholic Church be¬
cause that Church had become corrupted with a top-
heavy hierarchy and a most oppressive formality. But
one thing must be said in favor of the Roman Catholics:
They are sincere. They may be blind, they may have the
wrong light, they may be wrong. But one thing is sure:
They are sincere, they are in earnest and they believe in
themselves to such an extent that they want to Romanize
the world. The fact is that they are spreading like wild¬
fire and if the Protestant churches do not awake to the
seriousness of the situation and cast out some of their
hyprocrisy we may be presently called upon to witness
the triumph of a Roman Catholic world.
A man who sells his church is not long in coming to
the place where he will sell himself, sell his honor, his
good name, nay, even his race, his neighbor, his wife and
his child.
Being a minister of the Gospel, I do not take any active
part in politics. Not that I believe it would be a sin, but
simply because my work takes up all of my time and I do
not have any left for any other consideration. But as a
citizen, however, I do take a lively interest in following
the current political history of our country. I am thus
keenly interested because I am keenly alive to the effect
of what political changes shall have on my race.
And I followed with great interest the fortunes of the
candidates that were lately groomed to run the big race
in the major political campaign. It will be remembered
that money figured very largely in bringing some of the
candidates to the front, but this one thing caused their
political death. One man was almost in reach of the
prize when it suddenly came to light that he had bought
his way and that a very large sum of money had been
used at one point—perhaps many points—in order to
buy over a certain number of delegates or a block of a
38 No Place in Our Banks For a Judas or a Simon
certain State Convention. And this candidate was win¬
ning, perhaps would have won the nomination but this
sudden disclosure so crippled his chances that he was
forced out of the race. Back to the rear he was sent
and on by him ran a man whose moral worth was his
only asset
One thing is certain, that however much money may
have figured in the political campaigns of the past, the
decent people of this country will never again permit a
man to buy his way into the high offices of this gov¬
ernment.
And this thought has come to me rather forcibly: Do
not my own people need to be taught that principle
and honor and character are not commodities to be
bought and sold for money? Is it not a fact that the
Negro has been guilty of selling his manhood, his prin¬
ciple, his vote for money? And as much as we may re¬
gret it, is it not true that this fact has been used against
him in the political councils of the nation?
I do not believe that all the good can come to us which
we sometimes imagine through active participation in
politics. But it is true that we have been greatly em¬
barrassed because from time to time, numbers of us have
been known to sell our vote for a trifling piece of money.
And even within the ranks of that political party to
which most of us adhere, it is true that we have been
figured on like cattle, at so much per head. During the
late conventions, I learn that messengers came from cer¬
tain points with pockets bulging with money and with
authority to buy up conventions, state by state, and pay
for them spot cash.
When the Apostles sent Peter and John down into
Samaria to follow up the work of Philip, they found a
character named Simon who was a great magician. He
had made a great name for himself by playing tricks,
doing magic and bewitching the people. In fact he was
a sorecerer, to use the expressive term found in the 8th
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
No Place in Our Ranks For a Judas or a Simon 39
Now when Simon saw the wonderful works of Peter
and John, how they preached and cast out devils with a
power that was new to him, it looked like a mighty good
thing to him. He was anxious to have this gift because
he thought that he saw where it would help him in his
business and make him a lot of money. So he offered to
buy the Holy Ghost for cash.
But Peter made this memorable reply: "Thy money
perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the
gift of God may be bought with money. Thou has
neither part nor lot in this matter for thy heart is not
right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy
wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of thy
heart may be forgiven thee, for I perceive that thou art
in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity."
What Peter said to Simon, of Samaria, could be as
well said if he had lived today and spoken to men who
are alive today and who are taking up good room in pul¬
pits, parading themselves as leaders of the people and
ministers of the Gospel.
I have told you who the Judases are. Now who are the
Simons of Samaria? They are those who are Christians
for the sake of policy. They are those preachers who join
the ministry in order to further some worldly aim.
What is the effect of such insincerity on the people?
First, it brings the church into ill repute. It makes a
gap in the wall through which the powers of evil may
march boldly. It causes the faith of the weak-kneed to
falter. It gives the enemies of the church the chance
they are ever seeking to find.
I wish that I had it in my power to impress upon you
all the full force of that striking passage, Matthew the
5th chapter, where we find those expressions: '4Ye are
the salt of the earth—Ye are the light of the world—Let
your light so shine." In those four verses lie the very
crux, the very quintessence of the Sermon on the Mount.
Christ was speaking to His disciples and through them
to the preachers of all the ages.
40 No Place in Oue Banks For a Judas or a Simon
Is the church growing cold? Is the Spirit ceasing to
strive with us? Is evangelism waning among the peo¬
ple? Is the Devil growing more bold with each passing
hour? Is sinfulness and worldliness, cant, formality and
hypocrisy on the increase in the world? It is simply that
the salt of the earth is losing its savor.
On board the monster vessel ''Olympic" which bore
us like a floating place, a floating city, across the Atlantic
Ocean with over three thousand souls on board, my mind
and heart were wide awake to the thousand and one im¬
pressions which crowd themselves upon almost any one
who is making his first voyage to Europe. I was in¬
tensely interested in the personnel of the shipping crew
from the grimy stokers, down in the hold of the boat, to
the gallant captain, walking up and down the bridge of
his ship like a general in command of his army. It is
wonderful and thrilling to hear the captain give the first
order for the ship to move. It is inspiring to hear his
commands to the well-trained army of men who hear and
obey in the same instant. I wish that I could picture the
scene of the ship getting under way like a thing of life.
The last passenger has come aboard; the gang-way is
lowered. Thousands of us on board crowd upon the deck
to take a last glimpse of native land, waving to friends
on the dock below, some crying, some shouting, all keyed
to the highest pitch of anxiety. Moorings are cast, the
sailors haul in the ropes, the captain signals the engineer
and instantly the giant turbines begin to throb and roar,
the mighty screws begin to churn the water like an angry
whale astern, the stately ship finds herself, begins to
walk down the bay, passes miles and miles of docks and
the light-houses on right and left.
The miracle that is New York begins to recede. We
sweep on down under the colossal Statue of Liberty, past
Sandy Hook, where rests that mighty gun feared and re¬
spected by every fighting ship on earth. At last we
reach the open sea and with a bellowing farewell salute
our huge ship points her nose towards Europe and set-
No Plage in Oub Ranks For a Judas or a Simon 41
ties down to the task of ploughing a furrow across the
Atlantic Ocean.
All this to one who experiences it, for the first time, is
as impressive as a sun's eclipse at high noon. I saw each
man at his varied duty, from the pilot plying the big
wheel which kept the ship in her course, down to the scul¬
lion peeling potatoes and washing the pots in the kitchen.
But there was one position which had a greater meaning
to me than perhaps even that of the captain himself, al¬
though it was given not to the high officers, but to the
humblest of sailors in turn. Every evening just before
sunset one or two men are placed up in front of the boat
to walk from side to side looking with sharp eyes in all
directions to report whatever they see that has any mean¬
ing to a sailor. It may be a log-raft or a ship or a wreck
or a lighthouse. These men are called "the watch.''
Through rain and hail and snow and storm, all night
these men must walk on duty watching out for any dan¬
ger that might lie in our path. If you go out on deck at
midnight, you will find them there walking and watch¬
ing, walking and watching, ready to warn the sleeping
thousands in their charge of any approaching danger.
This life is very much like a sea voyage. Christ has
placed a chosen group up in front whom he instructs to
look out for danger. These men, like the watchmen,
who walked the walls of the ancient cities must walk the
deck of the ship of life.
There are times when the watchmen of old left the
walls, proved traitors to their trust, fell to buying and
selling in the market-place or became drunken on the
wine of negligence. At such times the enemy has been
known to swoop down upon the unwary inhabitants and
put them to the sword.
Sometimes the watch on board the ship becomes blind¬
ed or careless. At such a time in the dead of night and
midocean, the ill-fated Titanic plunged to her death.
We, my brethren, are the watchmen. It is our bounden
duty to warn our people of all dangers. If you are hypo-
42 No Place in Our Banks For a Judas or a Simon
crites yourselves, you cannot be true watchmen; if we are
traitors ourselves, we cannot guide our people except to
their doom. See to it that there are none of the Judas
ilk among you. Unless we are true, we shall wreck our
ship upon the shoals and the quicksands. See to it that
as you fail in your duty the race will perish, sink and be
lost.
See to it that there are none of the Simon ilk among
you, none of the ilk who would buy their way rather than
merit it, none of the ilk who would offer to purchase with
money, a place in the church of God; for as soon as one
buys a place in God's church and is placed in possession
of the place bought, he immediately sets about to re¬
munerate himself and cares not what means he resorts
to regain the price he paid for his place. My brethren,
let us beware of the Judas and Simon spirit, let us be
true to our trust, imposed upon us and confided to us by
our Saviour, whose emulation He has commanded us to
follow. Others may pass you by in the race of life, may
forge ahead of you in life's battle, may trample you down
in their eagerness to gain world power, but if you are
true to your trust, the victory will be yours. Let Malt-
bie D. Babcock's poem inspire you:
Be strong!
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;
Shun not the struggle—face it; 'tis God's gift.
Be strong!
Say not, '' The days are evil. Who's to blame ?''
And fold the hands and acquiesce—oh shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name.
Be strong!
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long;
Faint not—fight on! Tomorrow comes the song.
No Place in Our Ranks For a Judas or a Simon 43
Having done the Master's bidding and played your
parts nobly, having spurned the Judas and Simon spirit,
coming down to death's dark and sullen stream, we can
face the monster in the spirit described in Kipling's
"L'Envoi," in which he says:
When earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are
twisted and dried,
When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest
critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—lie down for
an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work
anew.
And those that were good will be happy: they shall sit
in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of
comets' hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from—Magdalene and
Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired
at all!
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master
shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work
for fame;
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his
separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things
as they are I
"NO TIME TO MAKE MONEY"
Annual address delivered to the North Texas Con¬
ference of the A. M. E. Church (3d Session) at Bouham,
Texas, November 23, 1921, by Bishop William D.
Johnson.
There are probably but very few of iis who fully realize
the extent of many of the great fortunes which have been
piled up in this country by single men. We who find it
sometimes quite a problem to make ends meet are aston¬
ished to learn that there are men in America whose in¬
come is from one to two hundred dollars for every minute
they live, whether awake or asleep. Mr. Rockefeller is
estimated to be a billionaire, even more than a billion¬
aire. If that be true (and we have no reason to doubt it)
then Mr. Rockefeller's income would almost amount to
ten dollars for every breath he takes. Were Mr. Rocke¬
feller's fortune invested in wire it would stretch to the
sun, ninety million miles away. His wealth in dollar
bills placed end to end would make a paper rope that
would go nine times around this world of ours. His for¬
tune in silver dollars stacked one on top of the other
would reach near on to three thousand miles into the air
—or better to say into the sky, for at that high altitude
there would not be any air. If his vast estate were
changed into copper cents and loaded into freight cars,
it would take twelve hundred freight trains of fifty cars
each to haul it away.
All this is marvelous in view of the fact that Mr. Rock¬
efeller began life selling tin pans and tin buckets from
door to door. From that he went into the oil business,
No Time to Make Money
45
first as a peddler, then finally as the head of a company
which is now the biggest thing of its kind on earth, worth
more than many empires of history over which wars have
been fought and for which great kings have laid down
their lives.
But after all, much as thrift and economy and the in¬
crease of wealth are to be encouraged among us—after
all, is money and riches, in a worldly sense, the highest
mission of man on earth? Is there nothing higher—no
grander ideal to which we may aspire, toward which we
may strive, than the mere piling up of dollars? Mr.
Rockefeller has reared in his own memory a monument
of gold. History will acclaim him the richest man the
world ever saw or may ever see. He could almost ride
to the moon over his own railroad; he could belt the
world with dollar bills and load a thousand trains with
tons of money. But can he lay claim to having saved one
soul? Can he actually say that one human soul has pro¬
fessed a hope in Christ as the direct influence of his
teaching, his life and example, his exhortation or his
prayer? It may be true; if so, I am glad. But I have
every reason to doubt it. Mr. Rockefeller has given
much money to Universities, much to research, much to
science, some to charity. But has he ever given any of
his millions for Christianizing the hearts of men? Has
he ever, like John Wannamaker, gone out into the high¬
ways and by-ways and compelled men to come? If with
all his millions he has not one rescued soul to his credit,
then the most humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord
is richer than he.
There is something in life much higher than accumu¬
lating money. Let us glance through nature for instance.
Every creature that moves, from the ant to the elephant
knows the advantage of saving and putting by for the
future. The cat and the lion will put by food for a few
hours; the bee and the ant will save for months and
years ahead. The lower animals are thrifty and enter¬
prising. Rats and squirrels hide food away. The In-
46
No Time to Make Money
dians and the lower savage races stint, economize, save
up and accumulate; and if saving up what you cannot
eat now but may eat tomorrow is the acme of human en¬
deavor—if that is the highest to which the human soul
may climb, then civilization has no real advantage over
the savage state and man had just as well remain on a
level with the brute creation. The dog puts by a bone
for tomorrow. That is very good. God intended it so;
nature ordains it so. And perhaps the putting by of
this bone is the highest and the noblest thing which the
untaught dog can do. Sunrise for the dog is merely a
time to rise from sleep and go to look for more bones to
put by. The mystery of the night fleeing before the lord
of day victorious, means nothing to the dog. The moon
to him is merely something to bark at. The beauty, the
wonderful beauty, of nature has no interest for him. The
stars, flung out through the depths of limitless space
bring no profound thoughts of the Creator to him. Sun¬
set, nightfall and the greater mystery of darkness steal¬
ing on, like death, means nothing to the dog. To fetch
and bury bones in the day and to coil up in a corner and
sleep at night—that constitutes life's major interests and
major happiness for a dog. Carry a bone to some sick
dog across the way; divide what he has with some dog
less fortunate than himself—not a dog. No indeed, if
some weak, lean and hungry dog comes limping by on
three legs, footsore and hardly able to travel, our bone-
rich dog will be more apt to call to his neighbors to come
quickly and help run the three legged dog away; most
especially if he shows any disposition to stand his
ground. Every man for himself and the Devil take him
who is too sick or weak or unfortunate to take care of
himself—that's dog religion. And I'll tell you there are
thousands of these creatures we call men who have no
more religion than that.
O yes, a dog can put by. He can save. He can accumu¬
late. Perhaps with just a little more sense than he has,
a dog could learn to trade bones, lend out bones on in-
No Time to Make Money
47
terest, rent corners to sleep in and even make poorer dogs
do the work while he sits back and draws the profits.
Even as it is, woe be unto that small dog who shall so far
forget as to let a big dog see him with a bone.
Let us now glance for an instant into science, art and
literature, the achievements in which man proves his
superiority over the dog, the cat and the ant.
Man has been endowed by nature, just as the dog, with
an inclination, an instinct to put by, to save, to have for
tomorrow. In fact the Bible enjoins us not to waste, but
to be economical and thrifty. But it discourages the idea
of living merely to put by, merely to pile up wealth,
merely to bury bones. It is no harm to become rich any
more than it is harm to eat. Obtaining riches legiti¬
mately should not be considered a sin. We should ar¬
range to eat more than once every day we live in order
that we might continue to live. But the moment we cease
all thought of everything and live merely to eat, then we
are fast descending toward the pig who lives only to eat.
I sincerely trust that I am not misunderstood. This is
a subject upon which it is so easy to go wrong. Our race
is only beginning to get its feet wet financially and we
are by no means ''killed with millionaires." There is a
great need of money among us and many noble things
we might do if we had the money. But we must not en¬
courage the impression that the church is run for money,
that the collection is the principal thing; and we must
destroy the impression among our people that preachers
do not think about anything but money; and we must
likewise destroy the impression among the young men
coming into the ministry that preaching is an easy way
to make money.
If money were my aim, I would make the ministry he
very last door I entered; I would make preaching the last
thing I did.
Is money your object? Go get an old wagon and a
horse and a bell and go up and down the streets and roads
buying old iron, bottles and rags. You can make a sight
48
No Time to Make Money
more money at that if you will try. Run a grocery store,
sell wood, lay bricks, ditch, build houses, anything. Fix
shoes, curry horses, study medicine, milk cows; but above
all if money is your object, stay out of the pulpit, for
God's sake.
And I speak not to our ministers only. I speak to our
people in general, everywhere. Let not money be your
primary object in life. Let not even the accumulation of
money be your main purpose in the world.
And this I say directly to our ministers: Don't let
your mind run too strongly to the loaves and fishes in this
business. Don't always be thinking about the salary and
the wages. Some of our pulpits pay handsome salaries
but the men who are placed in them have always been
chosen because of special fitness and special ability. And
when they have ability and special fitness to fill these
pulpits they could always, if they wanted, make more
money at something else if money were their main ob¬
ject. If we teach ourselves to perform service, the re¬
ward will come without the asking—it will be all but
thrust upon us. But if we go out with our minds set upon
the reward alone, we shall never find it—never.
Most of us are quite agreed that Billy Sunday is a sin¬
cere preacher. While indeed we are mindful of the criti¬
cisms that have been made against him, we have always
felt that at bottom, his soul was permeated by lofty mo¬
tives. At least, we firmly believe that if money—simply
money—had been his object, he could never have done
the vast good for which he is given credit; and he never
would have been given such unusually large sums of
money. In passing upon a preacher like Billy Sunday we
must not be too severe in our judgments. People go to
hear Billy Sunday not by crowds but by armies. He has
addressed more people than any man in history. His
congregations surpass such throngs as come to hear po¬
litical speakers and resemble such crowds as cover the
ground around a big circus. And no special people go to
hear Billy Sunday. Thieves, shop-girls, good folks, bad
No Time to Make Money
49
folks, opera dancers, cut-throats, soldiers, carpenters,
sailors, gamblers, miners, railroad men, libertines, street¬
walkers—everybody goes to to hear Billy Sunday. Some
go to see the crowd, some go to hear the singing, some
go to laugh at Billy Sunday's antics and queer manner¬
isms. But it is certain that once under the spell of that
wonderful man, the thieves will put off stealing for a sea¬
son and the cut-throats and gamblers will for the time
postpone any crimes they had in mind. If he did no more
good than that, Billy Sunday would be worth far more
to the cause of decency and the law and order forces of
society than society gives him in turn.
When Mr. Washington died he had become almost a
wealthy man; but he never would have succeeded as he
did if his mind had been set upon the accumulation of
wealth alone. The one great idea of Mr. Washington was
service to his people. He wanted to accomplish great
things for his race. He never counted upon what his pay
should be. But his pay did exceed that of any teacher
which America has ever produced, perhaps even the
world.
The Bible is very emphatic on this point. David in
Psalms 62:10 says: "If riches increase set not your
heart upon them." Then in Job 31:25: " If I rejoice be¬
cause my wealth was great and my hand had gotten
much . . . and my heart hath been secretly enticed
or my mouth had kissed my hand, this were also an in¬
iquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have
denied the God that is above."
Pardon a little diversion here to cite the instance of a
white minister of my home state, Georgia. This instance
will illustrate better than anything I might say here, the
right and wrong attitude to the Chrisian ministry. On
one side you see the ministry commercialized; on the
other you see the ministry idealized. On the one hand
you will see the ministry as the Devil would have it; on
the other hand, the ministry as God would have it.
50
No Time to Make Money
This minister that I am about to tell you of, was a very-
successful preacher of the Baptist faith and had a great
following. While pastor of a certain charge he received
two calls. One came from a church not far from where
he lived and was couched in the spirit of the man's ap¬
peal in Paul's dream at Troas: "Come over into Mace¬
donia and help us. Come over and help us to build our
church. We need a minister of your type. We have a
large congregation, but our church is inadequate. How¬
ever we are willing workers and we need you. We are
authorized to offer fifteen hundred a year in salary.''
At the same time an aristocratic old church in Balti¬
more had sent him a call offering two thousand a year.
Now, this minister had an older brother in Macon, Ga.,
whom he had always taken into his confidence and whom
he loved very much in spite of the fact that this same
brother was a hard-headed business man who looked at
everything from an extremely practical, commercial and
worldly standpoint—that is to say, the standpoint of the
dollar.
The minister wanted his brother's advice. So the ad¬
vice came quickly and in a very few words.
" Brother, how much will that Georgia church pay
you1''
"Fifteen hundred" was the answer.
"And how much do you say that Baltimore church
will pay?"
"Two thousand is what they promise."
"Brother," said the older one, without hesitating a
second, ' * I think the Lord calls you to go to Baltimore.''
For once, however, the minister decided to go counter
to his worldly brother's advice and his reward in his own
State Convention has been ten-fold greater than if he had
gone to Baltimore with the dollar mark in his mind.
I know that it sounds strange but it is a fact that noth¬
ing great has been done in all history when men con¬
sidered the reward alone. Back as far as we can go into
the records of the past we shall find this to be true. The
No Time to Make Money
51
men who built the pyramids were paid in onions. Think
of it—onions! The greatest of all structures, the most
mysterious engineering, the most gigantic masonry this
world ever saw or probably will ever see, paid for with
onions. Do you believe men would have erected those
first wonders of the world if they had been thinking about
the pay alone? We, here, of Ethiopian extraction look
back to those enthusiastic builders of old Egypt and
thank them for having elevated an African race to the
proud position of being the supreme builders of the
world's great wonders. Suppose they had demanded
commensurate pay before they moved a stone; suppose
money had been foremost in their minds instead of a
burning desire to build a world's wonder; where would
our proud boast be today?
Look at the proud temples that crown the classic hills
of Athens, wonders of beauty, wonders of art, wonders
of architecture, setting the classic standard of all time
to come, structures that were dreams in marble to which
the degenerate Greece of today looks back in enviable
pride and says: *4 Behold from what noble ancestors we
are sprung!" Yet the men who reared those matchless
monuments of marble and carved those breathing statues
and colonnades worked for approximately thirty cents
a day. Suppose money had been their object, would they
have so enriched the world with an art that has placed
all future ages in their debt?
What amount of money could have paid for the work
of Eaphael and Michael Angelo? Can you suppose that
Raphael ever thought of the amount he was to get for
that immortal painting known as ' * The Transfigura¬
tion," or that Michael Angelo ever stopped to consider
what his painting, "The Last Judgment," would net
him in cash? Ah, no; his aim was to produce a master¬
piece—something upon which all future nations would
gaze in speechless wonder.
A few years ago a picture by Spain's greatest painter
was sold in New York for near on to a million dollars.
52
No Time to Make Money
But when Antonio painted it, he was glad to get a Dutch
cheese in exchange for it.
You have all read in the papers of a few months ago
about a certain very modest French woman who for years
and years had been working away in a little dingy lab¬
oratory in her native city. Her mind, heart and soul en¬
tire was bent upon discovering a strange and elusive
chemical or rather element which she believed to exist in
nature. It was, she believed, an extremely powerful ele¬
ment and she believed that much good would redound to
the world as the result of the successful isolation of this
element. She received no pay, no encouragement. And
she worked under the difficulty engendered by the age-
old prejudice of men against the intelligence of intelli¬
gent women—the prejudice which will not believe that a
woman can make any great discovery in science. After
years and years of the hardest kind of work Madame
Curie gave Radium to the world—Radium, a mysterious
element, the most powerful agent of concentrated energy
known to science.
France, the native country of Madame Curie, ravaged
by war, was too poor to reward her. But America sum¬
moned her to these shores and deputized President Hard¬
ing to present her with one hundred thousand dollars and
the thanks of the American people for the years of pa¬
tient and unselfish toil in wresting from nature the mys¬
terious thing called Radium.
And now the woman of the future may look man in the
face and challenge him to show cause why he should ar¬
rogate to himself a supposed intellectual superiority over
women. Look then, how obligated all future races of
woman-kind will be to this modest French woman, who
worked on through the unpromising years with no
thought of reward and finally achieved the greatest in¬
tellectual victory which has yet been won by woman in
the realm of science.
Men who live only to make money, to accumulate
money, to hoard it, to pile it up and look proudly upon
No Time to Make Money
53
it, do not cut much figure in the history of civilization.
They are not the leaders of civilization; they are not the
beacon lights of history. A fire, a flood or a panic may
sweep away over night all they have put together with
years of hoarding. It is the morally rich man, the in¬
tellectually rich man and the spiritually rich man who is,
who always was and will ever be the pillar of cloud and
fire in the march of civilization.
I have endeavored to show you that in all the walks of
life the most unnecessary man is the man whose whole
object is to make money. And no words of mine can pic¬
ture, in the least, my disgust and abhorrence for the
preacher whose mind is always taken up with his salary
instead of his work; who makes preaching a side issue
while the main activity of his life is making money for
its own sake.
I am reminded here of a minister who had a very com¬
mercial way of summing up how he managed to get
along. "Yes," he said, "when my cotton-patch isn't
running, my school-house is running and of course, my
pulpit is running all of the time. And sometimes all
three are running together." In this way he intimated
that he received an income from his cotton patch, his
teaching school and his preaching, putting the income
from the cotton patch right along with the income from
the pulpit.
Now, there is no objection to the cotton-patch; there is
no objection to the teaching school. The objection comes
in the view point, in the "relatively," if I may use the
name of Dr. Einstein's new science. The cotton-patch is
all right. In Acts 18:3, we find Paul working with his
hands to help pay for his board. And on Sunday he
preached right straight on, while working through the
week to support himself. But under no circumstances
can we conceive that Paul put tent-making and preach¬
ing in the same class.
I was talking recently to a white gentleman in Waco,
whose uncle is a minister whose life has been spent serv-
54
No Time to Make Money
ing small churches which paid small salaries. He is also
of the Baptist faith. Not very long ago he, the minister,
was offered a salary of twelve thousand dollars a year, if
he would only retire from the ministry and take up an¬
other line of work. He refused the offer. Sometime
later, being clothed very shabbily, he was taken into a
clothing store by his nephew and given a decent suit of
clothes, and in the meantime this same nephew repri¬
manded him severely, for not taking the twelve thousand
dollar job. "I have no time to make money," was his
reply. "I'm too busy—busy saving souls."
If there really is a God; if our faith is really not vain;
if Christ be really risen from the dead; if all that vast
galaxy of swarming worlds out yonder in the depths of
space are really doing the bidding of a conscious, per¬
sonal and Almighty Director; if that spark of conscious¬
ness within us is really an immortal soul that shall live
on through mortal death into the infinite ages of eter¬
nity; if our Bible be a Book of Divine inspiration and the
religion of Christ Jesus be not a fraud, then, of a truth,
the ministry of the Gospel of Christ becomes the profes¬
sion of professions and the saving of souls becomes the
most important business in all the universe.
By inexorable logic which is so simple that a child
may understand, we reach the ultimate and absolute con¬
clusion that we preachers are either the agents of God,
doing business in the interest and name of the vast cor¬
poration of God's eternal Kingdom, or else we are the
world's greatest cheats, the world's greatest fakirs; and
we are self-deceivingly practicing the greatest fraud in
history. We must, nay we are compelled to accept one or
the other of these conclusions. There is no compromise;
no middle ground; no reconciliation. It is one or the
other.
Our inner souls—our inner consciousness and the vast
panorama which we look out upon called nature, in which
we see design and plan from the million wonders of a
drop of water, a grain of sand, to the mightiest world,
No Time to Make Money
55
swinging out yonder billions of miles in space, nay, his¬
tory showing the finger of God moving through the ages,
working out an ultimate human destiny, our Bible with
its prophecies and promises, its history of that most won¬
derful of Teachers and the inspired words of those to
whom He ministered while on earth, nay, our scientific,
philosophical and religious inability to conceive of this
universe coming to exist by merest chance, our intellect¬
ual inability to conceive such mathematical precision in
the movement and inter-movement of the heavenly
bodies—all this, and much more, forces our conscious¬
ness to cry against the conclusion that there is no God.
Accepting all this, in the premises, we come naturally,
logically, inevitably to the conclusion that we are not
frauds and cheats, that we are not self deceived, that God
is not a creature of our fancy and the Bible a book of
fairy tales. The stars did not happen by chance; the
sun does not shine by accident; the Kingdom of God is
not a fable and our faith instead of being vain is ground¬
ed upon the bed-rock of eternal truth.
If we are going to preach then we should preach.
There should be no effort to dwarf and minimize the
greatest of all professions. There should be no effort to
make it a side issue. There should be no ulterior mo¬
tives lurking behind the mockery and formality of hypo¬
critical preaching.
Money, riches, wealth—if that is what you want, go
and bore oil wells, plant a ranch of Irish potatoes, go to
an undertaking school, run a string of restaurants, but
don't preach.
But if you are going to preach, don't let your mind be
thinking of how many railroad trains it will take to haul
away your dollars, but how many spiritual trains it will
take to transport the immortal souls you have saved into
the Kingdom of our God.
"FORWARD MARCH"
Annual address delivered to the Northwest Texas
Conference of the A. M. E. Church (1st Session) at
El Paso, Texas, October 26, 1921, by Bishop William
D. Johnson.
One of the most amusing anecdotes ever told by the
late Booker T. Washington and one which has drawn an
approving smile from thousands upon thousands, was
told about an old man who went out with his employer,
the captain of a small ship engaged in the coast-wise
trade.
The night being rather calm, the captain desired to
sleep for an hour or two, so he gave the steering wheel
to the old man with the instruction to steer directly to¬
ward a certain star. As soon as the captain had gone to
sleep, he old man also went to sleep. In the meantime the
boat had drifted on out of the right course when the old
man suddenly woke up and could not find the star which
had been given him. They all looked alike and he could
not tell one from another. But his wits did not leave
him. Rushing back to his employer, he shouted: "Cap¬
tain, Captain, wake up! Come and give me another star;
I done gone by that star what you give me. Come and
give another one."
As a race we have gone by every star that was ever
set for us. We have surpassed, in progress, the wildest
dreams of those who hoped that we would make good.
Compared with our beginnings fifty-eight years ago, the
statistics of our progress reach out to unbelievable fig¬
ures. It is admitted that no race in history has traveled
Forward March
57
as far along the road of Progress as the Negro in so few
years. The opposition which we have met has been keen
indeed because it was so ramified by the subtle veins of
prejudice. But we fought our way on, hoping for recog¬
nition from the dominant people of this country.
But we have never been made to feel that we are at
home. Always it has been thrown into our face that this
is not our country; that it is a white man's country and
that we are only permitted to live here so long as we may
be exploited or be made to serve a purpose. Yet we
struggled on making every day count regardless of how
cloudy was the sky; always striking camp further down
the road than we camped the night before.
Then came the Spanish-American War. We did our
part. The world knows that we did our part. Our charge
up San Juan Hill was the first chance we had as freed-
men to show to the world what kind of men we were—
what kind of citizens we were. But the years which have
followed have not been very happy years for us. The
American white people have not been as kind to us as
they might have been. Many times we have wished from
the bottom of our hearts that we never had seen this
country.
Some months before the late World War a certain dig¬
nitary, high in diplomatic circles, ventured to offer what
he considered to be a very vital criticism of America. He
said: "Mammon rules America. Patriotism here is
dead; the American people are money-mad; the lord of
Greed holds high carnival in the land; and the people
bow down to the almighty dollar like the heathen who
worships his idol of stone.
This high dignitary went even further and said that
in the event of a war with a strong foreign nation, the
Negro would prove a body of dead, bound head and foot
to this country. He said that the ingratitude of this na¬
tion to the black man in other years, the criticism of his
bravery, he treatment accorded him as a private citizen
in various states would cause him to be phlegmatic, in-
58
No Time to Make Money
different and cold as to the outcome of a great conflict,
and petrify him into a mill-stone that would hang with
overwhelming weight about the neck of this country, pre¬
cipitating all the direful woes set forth in Sacred Writ.
Scarcely had this gentleman made this remark when a
part of it received a very abrupt answer in the following
manner:
A certain prima donna, during an appearance in New
York City being asked for an encore after having ren¬
dered an exceptionally fine part, casually draped herself
in the American flag and in the whim of a moment sang
with all the feeling in her heart:
The '1 Star-Spangled Banner,"
Which forever shall wave
0 'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave.
And so tense was the patriotic feeling of America at that
time, the mere singing of this song stirred the hearts of
those who heard like a bugle call. They went almost mad
as the enthusiasm of their hearts burst forth like a vol¬
cano. The American spirit is dynamic and once aroused
sweeps forward in tidal waves of enthusiasm; and so
close to the American hearts of that audience was the sa-
credness of the flag that a relay of police had to be called
in to quell the patriotic riot.
It will be remembered that at that time President Wil¬
son had not made the celebrated speech upon which his
fame must rest—the speech before Congress in the April
of 1917, " accepting the gauge of battle and promising
to make the world safe for democracy;" promising
moreover "to dedicate our lives and our fortunes with
the pride of those who know that the day has come when
America is privileged to spend her blood and her might
for the principles that gave her birth."
That was America's answer to the criticism of the high
dignitary in the first part. It still remained for the last
part to be answered—the part which took cognizance of
the attitude and spirit of the Negro.
Forward March
59
The rumblings of war, the beat of the drum, the heart-
thrilling call of the bugle ought to have settled in that
gentleman's mind all doubt of America's patriotism; and
if not, then our feverish haste to get to the front, the mil¬
lions of men and money which began to pour into France
and the speed with which we crumbled the far-flung Ger¬
man lines ought to have convinced him.
But that other part—the part about the Negro, of his
being a mill-stone to drag this country down in case of a
war—that part remained to be seen.
As a matter of fact everybody knew how the Negro
ought to have felt—even knew exactly how he felt, be¬
cause he was human just like other men. And as a mat¬
ter of truth, we must admit that the statement of this
high digniary had not been made without a very close
study of conditions as they are; without a very scrutiniz¬
ing study of the American Negro's soul. He had heard
and known of the black man's sorrows, seen and felt the
heavy yoke that bears down upon his galling neck, looked
into his sunless sky and seen the light of hope fade away
and die. It has to be admitted that the Anglo-Saxon
race had always seemed to be bent upon alienating the
affections of the black race. All along, the gulf between
us had seemed to be growing wider and deeper. Every¬
where they had been lynching us—in many places they
had even been burning us at the stake. In state after
state the courts refused to give us that protection which
is accorded even to the lowest down in all civilized coun¬
tries—the protection of life and home. Ah! as we come
to think on these things we begin to see how the high dig¬
nitary must have known whereof he spoke.
No opportunity to humiliate us had ever been allowed
to pass. What could have been more humiliating to our
supersensitive souls than the scorn which was heaped
upon our patriotism and our willingness to serve our
country's need? Upon what more desolate rock could
our hopes have been cast than the American indifference
60
Forward March
to the blood we had poured out in battle beneath the
shadow of our flag?
When the black soldiers came marching back from the
Spanish-American War we went into hysterical enthu¬
siasm over them. When the immortal Ninth Cavalry
came marching down our streets, we cheered them to the
echo. And naturally we felt that America at large would
have joined us in common praise of our soldiers.
Instead of praise they met bitter criticism, patroniz¬
ing scorn and cynical contempt. Editorials teemed with
sneers, the most aggravating things were said, the col¬
ored militia was called in and disbanded all because the
Negro having faithfully served his country as a guardian
would naturally have expected in turn the ordinary
rights of an American citizen.
A few years passed; then came the supreme nightmare
of the ages—the World War; the War of Nations!
At first it was thought that this country could remain
neutral. But finally it was seen that we must all needs
fight or else be all destroyed along with the rest of the
world.
As soon as war was declared between America and the
Central Powers, propaganda began to be mysteriously
spread among us. Knowing how we had been treated,
strong efforts began to be made from a mysterious, all-
powerful source to influence the leaders of our people to
institute a sort of "hands-off" policy among us and
preach indifference to us. The head of this propaganda
was invisible, but the traces of the effort to incite trea¬
son among us was plainly discernable. I have heard that
even on the battle-front, airships flew over the trenches
of the black troops and rained down on them all manner
of literature calling on them to desert the Amercian flag.
I think that I am correct in naming The Crisis as my
authority for this statement.
All at once everybody began to be anxious as to how
the Negro would behave. Everybody wanted to know
how he felt. His record of untarnished loyalty was dug
Forward March
61
up and reviewed. Why was so much anxiety felt? Had
the Negro ever been disloyal? No. But it was known
that any other rp.ce on earth, situated as we were and
passing through a daily routine of suffering and injus¬
tice as we had passed through and were at that time
passing through, would have gladly succoured and har¬
bored the enemies of this country in her very midst.
Did the Negro think of doing that? No; his thought¬
ful leaders were on the job. It was about this time that
Dr. Moton, of Tuskegee, on being asked what the atti¬
tude of the Negro would most likely be, replied that the
Negro would be loyal just as he had always been loyal.
It was also about this time that Dr. DuBois, of The
Crisis penned his now immortal message to the race:
'1 Close ranks and forward march!'' Coming from a man
who had fought fearlessly and ceaselessly for the full
recognition of the black man's rights, who had fought
with back to the wall uncompromisingly and asking no
quarter, this message had the effect of magic on the en¬
tire American Negro race. In substance it said: "You
have not been treated right; you have been outlawed;
discriminated against, insulted, murdered, lynched and
burned; but let none of these things move you in your
high resolve to do everything that this country expects
of any man. The time has come when you have the priv¬
ilege of proving to this country that you deserve to be
treated as a citizen. Attention! Close ranks and for¬
ward march!''
Well, we did close ranks. We acted our part. We won
the praise of the world. We helped to swell the immor¬
tal battle cry: "They shall not pass Verdun.'' And
again, on returning to America, fresh from the battle¬
fields, our boys expected to receive the unstinted wel¬
come of the country at large.
Ah! they received anything else but that. Some of
the most unkind treatment ever accorded a subject race
in all history has been our share and portion since our
boys came back from France.
62
Forward March
But worse than all is the organized and chartered
league of aggressive terrorism which met the boys when
they returned from the most dreadful of all wars. I will
not even quote the name of this league since at this time
it is under heavy fire from every religious organization
and every political party; while the big guns of the Gov¬
ernment are slowly being turned into range and may
presently be expected to belch forth in exterminating
fire.
As a result of this after-war attitude, our people are
disgusted, discouraged and hopeless. Scores of young
men have expressed themselves to me as wishing to leave
America. "No future for the race in this country," they
say; and on the face of it, the thing seems true. The
darkest clouds that ever hovered over the horizon of a
race now hover over us.
We are at a standstill. Across our path there seems to
be a roaring river with all bridges washed away. Be¬
hind us is the foot-bleeding road over which we have
come; before us is the swelling river enshrouded in fog
What shall we do? Give up, lie down and die? Nc
let us gird our loins and forward march. Close ranks, if
I may repeat the essence of the DuBois message—Close
ranks and forward march.
You mothers who have the dearest interests of the race
at heart—many of you weep for sons who went to the war,
but never came back. Than you there is no sadder pic¬
ture on earth. The white mother when she weeps for her
son, at least, has the consolation and sympathy of the
community and the state. But you—you must weep in
neglect and obscurity and I know how your hearts have
all but failed you. Yet you must close ranks, shoulder
arms and forward march, for unless God be dead, He will
even yet in His own time, bring a success and a glory to
this American Negro race commensurate to all the suf¬
ferings we have endured.
You fathers, close ranks and forward march. I am
one of you. I suffer with you and hope against hope with
Forward March
63
you. I know that you wonder in your hearts, what you
shall tell your boys—what you shall hold out to them as
a reason for striving to attain to the best.
But I say to you, that everything depends upon our
sticking on just a few days longer. I feel inspired to tell
you that powerful agencies are at work which I believe,
will ere long put to flight all the enemies of Ethiopia and
pull back the clouds like a scroll. I feel that God, after
suffering us to wander in the wilderness, will presently
give us a glimpse of the promised land. Therefore let
us close ranks and forward march.
Close rank and forward march. I know you ministers
of God are footsore and tired. I, too, am one of you and
I know the road. I know how hard it is to keep the spirit
alive among our people when they are bowed down un¬
der such drooping skies. But I say to you as a rcae men
and as Christians: Close ranks, shoulder arms, and for¬
ward march.
There is about to take place in this country the first
glimmerings of the fulfillment of one of the oldest
prophecies in the Bible—Micah, 4:3, " And he shall judge
among many peoples and rebuke strong nations afar off ,
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and
their spears into pruning-hooks. Nation shall not lift up
sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any
more.''
The President of the United States, at the instance of
Congress, has called together the first conference the
world has ever known that really means to put an end to
war, the end of killing by profession, the end of horrible
invasion, destruction and devastation; and the end of air
navies, the end of super-dreadnaughts will mean the be¬
ginning of the peace that was foretold by the prophets.
With the decrease of fighting in the world, hatred will
decrease, race prejudice will decrease because the spir¬
itual air will become surcharged with God's love. God's
love cannot penetrate into the human heart when the hu-
64
Forward March
inan heart itself is so permeated with hatred, anger and
distrust as is the case today.
God's blessings upon the Disarmament Conference.
God's blessings upon the most Christ-like, international
meeting that ever assembled on the earth. Let us pray
that the blessings may not only reach over the world in
general, but may even reach down and include the Ameri¬
can Negro.
In the meantme, brethren of the Northwest Texas Con¬
ference, let us close ranks, shoulder arms and forward
march.
THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS
Annual address delivered to the Texas Conference
of the A. M. £. Church (55th Session) at Bryan,
Texas, November 9, 1921, by Bishop William D.
Johnson.
You who remember your French history will recall
that toward midnight on the eve of St. Bartholomew's in
the troublous year of 1572, a great bell rang out over the
city of Paris. It was the fatal signal for one of the most
needless and shameful massacres in all recorded history
—the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Nothing compares
with it in inexcusable brutality; nothing approaches it in
reckless savagery; nothing equals it in cruel and unjust
vengeance.
The Huguenots were the Protestants of France. They
represented the French wing of the Reformation. With
each passing hour they were becoming more powerful.
Every circumstance indicated that they would in a short
while, become the dominant religious group. Catherine,
the deceitful mother of Charles IX, hated the Huguenots,
so in her wicked heart was born the horrible scheme of
destroying them all in a single night and driving them
from France forever.
At the first peal of that fatal bell armed men rushed
into the streets butchering the poor Huguenots wherever
they were found. Hither and yon they rushed, murder¬
ing men, women and children, many of whom were asleep.
Altogether ten thousand souls perished on that frightful
night.
History is full of the massacre of helpless and defense-
66
The Murder of the Innocents
less people at the hands of bigoted and narrow zealots or
scheming, cruel tyrants from Herod's murder of the in¬
nocents to the late German generals who turned whole
communities into human slaughter-pens.
But it is my object now to call your attention to a mod¬
ern murder of the innocents which surpasses, in destruc¬
tion, even Herod's massacre of the children in the sec¬
ond chapter of Matthew. I mean the murder of our own
children by our own neglect—the murder of our own
children—the tender souls of them—by oxtr failure to
throw around them those high walls of protection which
would shield them from the insidious forces that aim to
bring about their spiritual and moral death.
Behold now the little child without the remotest meas¬
ure of responsibility for its presence here, innocent and
dependent, ignorant and free of all those dark passions
which goad men on to anger and murder—a little child
looking up into your eyes for bread and protection—who
could have the heart to take its little physical life?
What man could have the heart to refuse it bread for its
little hungry mouth or a coat for its little back or food
for its little budding soul.
And yet that is exactly what you are doing by your
neglect. For just as your criminal neglect to feed it, to
put shoes on its little feet and a coat upon its little back
will cause it to sicken and die from the pangs of hunger
and the chill winds of winter, so a neglect to feed and
clothe its little soul will cause inroads to be made upon
its moral health that must ultimately bring about its
moral death.
Every race on earth is doomed which does not look to
the welfare and uplift of the children. Every state and
city and community is doomed which neglects the chil¬
dren. Every tribe and society and family is doomed
which permits the children to drift on the tide. And the
church—our church—is doomed when it shall forget the
children.
Thb Murdbb op the Innocents
67
Let us view the question first from a physical stand¬
point.
***********
There has come a decided change in the opinion and at¬
titude of latter day students in regard to the children.
The old idea, among our people especially, was that a
child should begin to shift for himself almost as soon as
he could walk.
Let us be frank. You know that it used to be a habit
among us to make children wait until all older people had
eaten, and then they were permitted to come on, like lit¬
tle oxen or pigs and eat what was left if anything was
left. I know scores and scores of people who brought
their children up in this way and thought it was right.
How much dyspepsia and chronic indigestion has been
caused by over-hunger and over-eating which, itself, re¬
sulted from the enforced fasting of little children com¬
pelled by their thoughtless and negligent parents to play
out of doors on empty stomachs while these same parents
and the invited company laughed and cracked jokes and
told tales and gossipped and ate up all of the dinner,
sometimes leaving nothing for the children.
What child brought up in the homes of the olden times
cannot now recall the unspeakable tortures of having to
play out of doors while dinner was being eaten by the
company in the house ? There were some exceptions—a
good many exceptions; but the general rule was that
children should wait. 4'Help yourself to the chicken,
brother, So-and-So; plenty more for the children.'' Did
any of you ever hear that expression1? And did it ever
occur to you that sometimes there was more and some¬
times there was not; and that when Brother '4So-and-So"
had really helped himself, there really was not, most
surely was not, any more for anybody.
All of you have heard the anecdote about the little
boy who kept watching the preacher take biscuit after
biscuit from the plate until one solitary biscuit alone was
left. The little boy stood in the door with wistful eye
6$ The Mtjbder of the Innocents
and watering mouth, wondering if the preacher would
be kind enough to leave that one biscuit. But finally
when the preacher nonchalantly reached over and took
that very last biscuit, the little boy threw a fit and fell
backward out of the door.
That is a pretty old joke around through my home
State, but at bottom, there is much sound truth in it.
That thing has all but happened in the lives of hundreds
of little boys. Who knows but what some of those little
boys are sitting under the sound of my voice this very
minute f
I don't know where the old-fashioned people got the
idea that children's stomachs are copper lined and iron
bound, instead of being the most delicate contrivances in
nature. I cannot imagine why they could not see that
there is all the difference in the world between the stom¬
ach of a child and the stomach of a chicken. I cannot
imagine what caused them to believe that children's
stomachs could digest whetsones and pig iron.
I remember some years ago that a good sister in send¬
ing something to the parsonage went on to say: "take
this to Brother and Sister So-and-So, and tell them if
they can't eat it to give it to the children." Nobody ever
thought there was anything wrong with an expression
like that. Nobody stopped to question the justice of a
thought like that. People, generally thought that was
the proper spirit in which to regard children. The little
things were looked upon as scavengers to eat or destroy
what older people could not or would not eat. This is
a fair sample of the attitude to children in many homes
I have known. Parents have been known to wrap them¬
selves in warm clothing and heavy shoes while the chil¬
dren were made to wear cast-off, ragged clothes and go
bare-footed ofttimes in the dead of winter. How often
have I seen tiny little boys with holes in their stockings
and brogan shoes, trudging over snow and frozen slush
getting up wood to warm their well-clad, lazy daddies
sitting up roasting by a roaring fire. And as I looked at
The Murder op the Innocents
69
these little, puny, half-frozen boys with running noses
and chilblained feet, indicative of the neglect they were
suffering, I have often thought that it would have been
better, if in the mercy of God, such little children had
never been born.
We are learning better now. We know now that the
strength of the future man depends upon the care we
take of the child today—the child God gives us now.
Look at the care men take in the raising of chickens,
pigs and horses, -and yet so little to the raising of chil¬
dren. Indeed it has been said that if children had one
tenth the care that is given to race horses they would
make far better citizens, be far more efficient and make
far better speed on the road of life.
I am told that in up-to-date stables where they groom
the high-bred racers for the big race-tracks, the keepers
refuse to let any one speak in a loud voice and all swear¬
ing is prohibited for fear of making the horses restless
and nervous. How great it would be if parents were
one half so careful as these keepers are in the care of
their horses.
Now the love of certain work is born in a child; the
genius for leadership or scholarship or craftsmanship is
given him with his breath. If this love for work or this
innate genius is nurtured and encouraged by sympathetic
parents, then the child becomes a great citizen, a great
scholar or a great leader. Neglected, these inclinations
grow up like weeds. For every need which the world
will have for a great man tomorrow God gives us a child
today. Oared for, he will make the great man the world
shall need; neglected he is lost. As we look upon these
great institutions presided over now by white-headed
men of distinguished ability—institutions of learning, of
government, of jurisprudence, of religion, of publicity,
of commerce, and finance, we are sometimes given to
wonder who will be in charge of these institutions fifty
years from today.
Who will be the Rockefeller fifty years from today?
70 The Murder; op the Innocents
Where is he t Who will be the Pierpont Morgan of that
day, the Edison, the Roosevelt, the Elihu Root, the
Booker T. Washington! Where is the Henry McNeil
Turner, the Daniel A. Payne and the Richard Allen fifty
years from today?
The Rockefellers, the Morgans and Vanderbilts of that
future day are now little boys who on the advice of
thoughtful parents are saving the pennies they earn day
by day instead of foolishly throwing them away. The
Roosevelts and Roots of that day are now little boys anx¬
ious to excel in games and books; the Booker Washing¬
ton of that day is now a little boy yearning to do some¬
thing some day that shall redound to the glory of his
race; and the little Turners and Paines and Aliens are to¬
day dreaming of the time when they shall make our
grand old church a still greater institution, a still greater
moral and religious force among our people.
The General in Chief of the Grand Army of the Repub¬
lic of that day is today a little boy whom you may al¬
ready have seen with leggins and uniform leading the
Boy Scouts—the Boy Scouts of America which is merely
the United States standing army of tomorrow.
And the President of the United States fifty years from
today—only a year or two ago he was rocked to sleep in
some American cradle under the watchful eye of some
American mother.
****** * «*•.-»
President Harding has just made the master stroke of
his administration and made it in consummate modesty
which may mean his re-election in case all goes well.
President Harding has called the most momentous con¬
ference of this age to convene at Washington to consider
the possibility of reducing the armament of the world.
His choice of delegates to represent the United States at
this conference is everywhere conceded to be a happy
on, in view of the fact that it is made up of the four brain¬
iest diplomats and political experts on the American con¬
tinent : Hughes, Root, Lodge and Underwood.
The Mtjrdbb of the Iitn'ocbn'ts
71
Fifty years from now there will be conferences of the
same kind—conferences to reduce armaments—confer¬
ences to prevent war—conferences to promote peace.
Ah, as we think on these things we cannot help wonder¬
ing which are the little boys running around today that
will guide and dominate those future conferences in lead¬
ing the world to study war no more.
The all-powerful nations of today are the nations
which fifty years ago, nay, live hundred years ago were
paying the greatest attention to the rearing, education
and spiritual training of the children. We, ourselves,
can accomplish but little. If the achievements of our
race are to stop with what we alone have accomplished,
then, we shall not amount to much in this world; our day
is practically over and our sun is almost set. Looking
back over our lives we may take credit for having done
the best we could according to our chances. But if the
heights to which we have climbed represent the highest
point to which we are to climb in history, then we had as
well admit that the prejudiced white man is right when
he calls us an inferior race, inferior by nature and so or¬
dained from the foundation of the world.
But we do not believe that. We do not believe that we
are inferior. We do not believe that we shall climb no
higher. Our hopes and dreams are centered upon oui
children. They are the ones who shall begin where we
left off and climb until they reach the heights from which
the world can see.
What, then, is our duty? More than any race on
earth, we should see to it that our children have every
opportunity which we may have in our power to give
them. Not that we shall deny ourselves the necessities
of life that they might have luxuries. But I do mean
that we shall deny ourselves luxuries that our children
might have the opportunities for education and training.
And I am saying these things to you, brother ministers,
that you might go out and teach our people along this
72
The Murder of the Innocents
line and wake them up upon the subject of a care for the
children.
Brothers, let us not eat and waste the corn of oppor¬
tunity and throw the husks to our children. We are
throwing husks to them when we turn them adrift upon
life's sea in a little canoe without a paddle, the paddle of
education, the paddle of mental and moral training. We
are throwing husks to them each time we rob them of an
opportunity to fit themselves for life. Let us not clothe
ourselves in ease and the comfort of forgetfulness while
the chill and frosts of neglect are biting away the
strength of their little souls. Let us not sit idly by and
watch the weeds of ignorance sap the vitality of their
little minds for this is worse than the Murder of the In¬
nocents.
Boast, as we may, and measure, as we may, when we
come to compare what we have done with what other
races have done it is as nothing. I know that when we
take in the element of time and previous condition, the
progress of our race surpasses the progress of any race
in history. But when we get down to brass tacks and
compare our actual achievements with the achievements
of other races, we have not done anything.
Posterity, you see, holds no brief for any race and en¬
ters no special pleas. Whether a race has been fifty
years or five hundred years in developing, it finally must
be judged by its present worth.
That being true (and it cannot be successfully denied)
then we must risk our all on our children. And I repeat
it, let our ministers, here assembled, go out from this
conference resolved to think more seriously on this
problem of the children. Our church, which is the grand¬
est organization of Negroes, must not die with us. None
of us would have the heart to labor on if we thought that
this great organization must fail for the lack of leader¬
ship and support. We feel that way about the race.
This means that we must go back to our work with the
determination of building up the Sunday Schools and
The Murder of the Innocents 73
Allen Christian Endeavor Leagues until they become real
things of good instead of formalities. Let us make the
Sunday Schools and Leagues more vitally interesting.
Directly after the Civil War the word Sunday School
had a meaning to our people. The Bible in those days
was studied intensely and not formally and the church
grew proportionately faster than it is growing today be¬
cause of the very enthusiasm with which the leaders en¬
tered into the work.
Do not let your Sunday School be a mere ceremony, a
mere series of formal responsive readings and bell ring¬
ings and dry literary prayers. Brothel, We must not fall
into the temptation of letting our church services and
our Sunday School exercises run into formalities. Form¬
ality is death on spirit; and when we kill the spirit we
lose the children. Formality has been the death of the
Christian Church ever since Roman Catholicism seized
upon it as a means by which to rear a ceremonial throne
of power to hold the world in dread and fear.
No, put some reality into the Sunday School and
League; put some snap into it. Do not neglect it because
it is mostly made up of children.
The World, the Flesh and the Devil are advancing
abreast. They are coming like a great army marching
on. The Devil used to give back on Sunday for the
Church, but now in many places he has taken Sunday for
his main day. Some of the biggest games of professional
baseball in large cities are now played on Sunday. Cir¬
cuses are permitted to draw large crowds in many parts
of the country on the Sabbath day. Thousands of mov¬
ing picture theatres are open in many cities on the Sab¬
bath day. The Devil is marching on. Every now and
then his agents approach some young man of our con¬
gregations and make big offers. And when refused they
make still bigger offers to induce the young man to come
over into the service of the Devil. Then pretty soon we
see an empty pew. The Devil's offer has been accepted.
Better get busy, my brethren. The dance halls and gam-
74
The Muedee of the Innocents
bling dens are doing a rushing business. Sometimes they
don't have standing room.
Don't neglect the Innocents. Don't murder them with
neglect. Don't forget them. You can at least give them
as much care as the farmer gives his pigs and fancy
ehickens. You can at least give them as much care as
the jockey gives his trotting horse.
If we are to realize the dream which we have dreamed
of the future greatness of our race, it must be through
our children. Therefore, let us push them on and up into
the sunlight of a perfect day where the world can see us
and God's smile rest upon us because we shall have
reached that high place which He intended for us from
the foundation of the world.
THE END