n VjVv ,i~-Y-- .• V S v / -' x y <) v TKe NEGRO BISHOP MOVEMENT IN THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF SOUTH CAROLINA 13 0 0 □ 0 BY THE REV. J. HERBERT WOODWARD OF THE DIOCESE OF SOUTH CAROLINA 0 0 0^3 SENT POST-PAID ON RECEIPT OF TWENTY-FIVE CENTS Address: HERBERT WOODWARD, McPhersonville, S. C. EJRAID flc HUTTON, PRINTERS. SAVANNAH. GA COPYRIGHT 1916 BY HERBERT WOODWARD*, "THE NEGRO BI5HOP MOVEMENT" IN THE (EPISCOPAL) DIOCE5E OF 50UTH CAROLINA A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY. By Kev. J. Herbert Woodward, of the Dioeese of South Carolina. The 124th Council of the Diocese of South Carolina, which, not quite a year ago, alonvened at Greenville, voted in favor of the Negro Bishop Suffragan, of the white Dio¬ cese, in preference to the Negro Bishop, having jurisdiction in a separate Negro Diocese. A committee was appointed to confer with the commit¬ tee of the General Convention, on Constitution and Canons, in regard to framing a suitable Canon for electing a Negro Bishop Suffragan of South Carolina, and to report to the next Council of this Diocese, and Delegates were appointed to the Synod, which met later,, at New Orleans, presumably to get the mind of the Southern Dioceses, concerning the whole question of Negro Bishops, in this Church, and, per¬ haps .also to further influence and impress the Southern mind, under the benign influence of the Sewanee Spirit. The Council at Beaufort, three years ago was, Or thought it was, overwhelmingly opposed to this same Suffra¬ gan plan and how it has experienced a change of heart since then is an interesting study in human nature and a study, also, in that old principle of indirection of the art of theo¬ cratic government, which has been 'called "a wheel within a wheel," the true original of all human government soever,- and which has not, yet, quite fallen into " innocuous desue¬ tude," in the modern government of states. Whoever interlopes between a Bishop and hisi flock, with whateever apparent justification, is promptly and properly repudiated as a goat, for what saith the Holy Saint Ignatius? "He that plotteth against his Bishop serveth the Devil." Yet, even so, it seems to me, the Diocese of South Car¬ olina before taking her final, irrevocable plunge into un¬ known depths, might deign once more to hear the voice of Southern conservatism, though it be only the voice of a sparrow, .alone upon the housetop. If ever anything is not exactly as it should be, in the Church, it is not lawful, either to speak of it "before the unbelievers," or to "tell it to the 'Church," and, very likely, my good friend, Dr. Polonius, would not approve the publication of this very article, for we are, most of us, the spiritual descendants of the great and good Constantine, who is accredited with saying, if he knew a Bishop to be guilty of adultery, he would say nothing about it, lest he. injure the Church. This devout instinct of hiding our heads in the sand has been the prolific mother of abuses through all the ages. Just twenty-five years ago, about the time the Negro Question, as we are told, came near disrupting this Dio¬ cese, in another Southern Diocese under a Southern-born Bishop, the practice of social equality, at the Council (i. e., white and colored clergy and laity sitting and eating to¬ gether at the same table), was broken up by the Secular Press, and I am confident that, for a certain untoward tendency in this Diocese, public opinion is now the only antiseptic. "The huntsman has ridden too> far on the chase, And eltrich and eerie and strange is the place." That would be an embarrassing' predicament for an Episcopal minister. But we, of the clergy, are no such ardent and daring souls. The real object of our studies is not so much to make us original thinkers, as: to ground us thoroughly in the things we ought to think. Even our opin¬ ions are mostly handed down to us ready-made, and the rank and file of us would hardly presume to say, or think anything very startling of our own minds, however obvi¬ ously true, until it had been thought and said, already by men of "light and leading" in the Church. And furthermore we are men of diplomacy and tact. Few clergymen of any prominence, few certainly of those who love the chief seats in the Synagogue, observing the set of our Bishops' chin, and the formidable phalanx of Episcopal authority behind him, would be so opinionated as to kick over the traces, in dead earnest, in direct opposition to their Bishop, when he is just about to all but pluck the crown from the furrowed brows of the Great Emancipator. I only ask credit for the same honest conviction that I fully accord to all the friends of the Negro Bishop Move- 2 ment, and, if I seem to differ a little pointedly, they will please remember it is all zeal-honest zeal, and as ardent as their own. I yield to no one in unfeigned admiration of the noble qualities of head and heart that .are natural to the Bishop of South Carolina, as God created him, but if my only brother had been bitten by the typhoid fly and were deliri¬ ous with fever, I would firmly and faithfully try to hold him down, as gently as I could, under the circumstances. For, this new race feeling, in the Diocese, is an old race feeling, revivified, not very unlike the old New England type, ,and when once it gets into the Southern blood, it is a kind of madness, and " madness, in great ones, must not unwatched. go." I have made an analysis of the Racial, Suffragan, Negro, Bishop movement and here is the result. "All men are the sons of God; all men are equal, before God, and equal in the Church. If all men are equal before God, they are equal anywhere in God's universe." And here is the true, underlying principle, the esoteric doctrine of the whole movement. <<-We can't convert a race that we ostra¬ cize socially for it is a denial of the doctrine of, the Father¬ hood of God." This is the bacillus of the new race feeling which, like other virulent diseases, likes fresh blood, and when a Southerner of the Southerners is once thoroughly inocu¬ lated, he is wonderful, a walking culture tube, and when a Southern Bishop develops a typical case, and sets out to lead his Diocese, in the path of progress, it is enough to make the angels weep. The House of Bishops, for many years, has been obtain¬ ing cultures, directly from the Negroes themselves, in addi¬ tion to the stale, old New England culture, which, quite appreciably, has lost its strength. The incipient stages of this neurosis show slight mental debility, with a peculiar weakening of the spinal column. Even the first inoculation absolutely destroys, in the patient, the power to acknowl¬ edge that he has any such infirmity as race feeling, or to give other evidence thereof, and the consequence of a general epidemic in the South, will be to benumb, deaden, paralyze, destroy and ultimately kill all race feeling whatsoever, ex¬ cept, of course, the race feeling of the opposite pole, from which the culture was originally taken. . This bacillus has been, to Southern prejudice, the dead fly in the ointment of our National Church, ever since the war. While it has seemed to stunt the growth of the 3 Church, in the South in reality, it has only been sending its roots deep down into the great moral idea for which the Church is coming mor§ and more io stancb J The mantle of a decadent political party is even now .about to fall uponj this Church. In view 01 the settled policy of our Bishops and the General Board of Missions, it is obvious that money, once the root of all evil, but now the greatest means of grace, „jvill soon pour in, and the Church is expected to take on a moist phenomenal growth, especially among the more refined colored people of the South, becoming more and more the Church of the real Southern people, leaving the polloi, the commonalty, with their passion and race prejudiet aloof, to their own devices and the works of the Sectarian. The old Force Movement of Reconstruction had sig¬ nally failed of its obvious purpose to eradicate race feeling, but here we have a more subtile principle, merely the grad¬ ual substitution of one race feeling for another, whereby the Southern Churchman may be piously beguiled into cut¬ ting of his own quaint, absurd, antiquated, heathenish, queue. When our Bishop condemns race-feeling, he means only the race-feeling of the white man. The race-feeling of the Negro is being sedulously cultivated, to the end that, peradventure, it may swallow up the race-feeling of the white man, as the rod of Aaron swallowed up the rods of the Egyptians. If this new race feeling be of God, the Southern prin¬ ciple of white supremacy is of the Devil, and the Episcopal Church, if this Movement prevails, is going to do what it can to root it out of the land, out of the hearts of the peo¬ ple, and out of the statute books. All criticism has stood abashed, for several years, in the presence of this Holy Crusade, but one very natural and proper criticism is the obvious fact that the Movement, in this Diocese, does not appear before us under its own true colors, and the further fact that the methods that, so far, have forwarded its progress are never needed in a righteous cause. The Confederacy was cut in two by the fall of Vicks- burg, and as Mr. Lincoln said, "The river ran unvexed to the sea." How the Federal fleet, after entering the mouth of the Mississippi River, succeeded in passing Fort Jackson and New Orleans, without firing a shot, forms an interest¬ ing study in the employment of moral effect, in military strategy and the things of this world, but not, let us hope, of how this Church does things, or how the Holy Apostles did. 4 It was thought impossible for the fleet to pass, either Fort Jackson or the city, and the commandant at Fort Jackson, confident that the fleet could easily be destroyed by the batteries higher up the river, allowed it to pass by unmolested, and when suddenly, unexpectedly it ap¬ peared before the city, it Was. thought useless and danger¬ ous to attempt to stop it then, as the commandant at Fort Jackson had not even dared to fire upon it, and so it ran scot free by both defences.' The impossible happened as easily as winking, and the same principle lies ready to the hand of the astute ecclesiastic. Three years ago, at the Council, at Beaufort, the Bis¬ hop of South Carolina faced the impossible, and he was superb. The man, in the full panoply of the Bishop, spurred into the angry, inchoate mob and routed it, without their knowing it, his good lance tipped with finely tempered steel, exceedingly antique, the time honored principle, "If a thing does not appear, it is all one as if it did not exist." The most he had to go upon, as favoring the Suffragan, was the majority report of the Council's Committee which was not, strictly, even a majority report, until the addi¬ tional member he had appointed, ad interim, was confirmed by the Council, at his request to make it a majority, but he made the most of it, saying, "If the Council did not see fit to comply with the recommendations of the Committee, he was "in favor of .any delav that did not involve a sacrifice of the method and policy involved in the plan proposed, by the Committee." And he gently said he came in no con¬ troversial or argumentative mood, nor in the role of a special pleader, he had no desire to force the election of a Negro Suffragan upon a reluctant Diocese, if he could not lead his Diocese he would not drive it, if his views did not find favor, ,and were shown to be unsound, he would gladly relinquish them for the good of the Church, he would do his own duty and leave the issue with us. Then he stiffened his lip and smiled sardonically and said, if the Diocese did not of her own accord, elect the Suffragan, another and f^r* more objectionable Negro Bis¬ hop would be forced upon us. Of events that are yet "on the knees; of the gods," only a Bishop can prognosticate, so absolutely. It is safer, for us of the inferior clergy, rather to- testify of the things that we do know and to prophesy of the things that we have seen—of earthly things, at all events. Two years ago, at the Council, at Charleston, the Bis¬ hop dramatically pictured this same sword of Damocles, still hanging high above our devoted heads, and yet again, 5 at the Council, at Greenville, he solemnly warned us that it w&s no longer a question of Negro Bishops, but what kind of Negro Bishops. I humbly submit that this is not the way that white people should be treated. If ,a Lily-white House of Bishops can treat us so, what will be done to us when that homo- genious body shades off into the truly Catholic hues, of b^ack and tan? "When this ecclesiastical bayonet was first presented at the timorous breast of the Diocese of South Carolina, I said it was only ,a thing of papier mache, but our chief Pastor has stood and presented it so solemnly, so sternly, and so persistently, that it has answered every purpose of a genu¬ ine bayonet of steel. No evil can. touch the soul from without: it must pro¬ ceed from within. However true it might have been that the Negro Bishop would be forced upon us, there is still a difference between coercion and seduction. The assertion of the principle, of the spiritual supremacy, of the Negro, in the white man's Church,' by the deliberate will of the white Churchmen of the South, in my opinion, is all the mind behind the movement ever expected to accomplish, at this time. Privately, in my own mind, I considered this menace of the Racial Bishop an appeal to the credulity and the pusillanimity of the Diocese, and I think so, still. We can open our mouths, wider, and shut our eyes, tighter, than any people of equal intelligence on earth. In a matter of expediency, second thoughts are best, but, in a matter of principle, the first thought is the true one. The moral in¬ stincts are immediate, they act upon the instant, or not at all. The woman that hesitates, the castle that parleys, the indecisive conscience that listens- to the tempter, are lost. And right well the Bishop was aware >of that. He knew, from the start, that the only obstacle to the Suffragan Dlan, as well it might be, was the race feeling of the Diocese and, from the very first, he launched his heaviest bolts against it. The Council, at Beaufort, when in Committee of the Whole, without a word of argument, was overwhelmingly against the Suffragan plan, but, after the Bishop took the chair, the Council hesitated, compromised, put it off and the Bishop scored. He forestalled the decision of the Diocese, and its very right of decision he promptly nipped in the bud, when he told us that where the Church had spoken, as loyal church¬ men, it was. our duty to follow. 6 At that time, neither the General Convention, nor any single Diocese, had committed itself to any Negro Bishop plan, but nevertheless he came down, then, on the unor¬ ganized, individual conscience of the Dioceese, with the sledge hammer of the assumed and hypothetical Corporate Mind of the Church, and the individual conscience in that particular withered from that day, and now that corporate moral conviction has gone to pieces like a rope of sand. For the representative of a business corporation to make a false rating to obtain credit, is contrary to the ethical standards of the commercial world and in violation of the civil law. But the empirical standards of the secular world bear no relation to a Bishop of the Church of God. The Negro in this Church has every means of grace the white man has. Why then does he want a Bishop of his own color? Purely and simply because he has race feeling. "Why do the friends of the movement want a Negro Bishop? Because they sympathize with the Negro, in his aspirations, and have the same race feeling. The demand for a Negro Bishop is all race feeling, and nothing else. The Bishop told us the Negro Bishop's salary would be forthcoming from without the Diocese. Why, then, should any man, who has a proper Christian feeling for the Negro, object to giving him his Negro Bishop? Because we do not want a Negro Bishop for ourselves, as a Bishop of our Dio¬ cese, and we do not want a Negroid House of Bishops, be¬ cause, to tell the truth (and shame the devil), we have a race feeling of our own. It is all race feeling, on both sides, and nothing else, and yet nobody, on either side, would admit that he had such an un-Christian thing about him, as race feeling. I would not say we are all a set of subconscious hypocrites, exactly, but great is the mystery of godliness. When Japan was aggrieved at the California incident, she was gravely assured there was no race feeling in the matter. Did she believe it? The Japanese are not so dense as that. But I never heard a member of the Council at Beaufort, or at Charleston, or at Greenville, own he had such a thing about him as race feeling, if he had it. And for that cause, however, in his private feelings, he may have objected to having a Negro Bishop over him, he was dumb, he opened not his mouth, he had no argument. It had been agreed, on both sides, in the Council at Beaufort, that, in view of the intense feeling, there should be no debate in open Council, but the Council resolved it¬ self into an executive session of a Committee of the Whole, 7 and -how the Bishop manipulated that clotured ConnciJ, after he resumed the chair, must have been seen to be ap¬ preciated, and how Mr. Manning, over the protest of the venerable president of tthe standing committee, accepted in the Council an amendment that nullified the action of the committee of the whole, in executive session, shows how quickly and cleverly an ecclesiastical politician in a clotured council, can seize an advantage to defeat the will of a trusting, reverential majority. I heard it boasted, at the Council at Beaufort, that one thing had been accomplished by the Bishop's address, race feeling in the Council was killed dead. It was, at all events, tabooed, and that was the first break in the wall. And when, for the sake of harmony, and to save the Bishop's feelings, in place of the minority report, condemning the Suffragan plan, adopted in committee of the whole, the substitute that we do not elect a Negro Bishop, at this time, was accepted by Mr. Manning, and adopted by the Council, the Bishop in the chair, right there, the camel got his nose into the tent. And I grieve to say that even the minority report by a striking coincidence of opinion was framed to please both sides. It was a noble image, its head was of fine gold, ''His breast and his arms of silver,,his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, and his feet part of iron and part of clay." It rested only an expediency, no principle was involved. There was no danger of Negro Supremacy, or of social equality. We might adopt the Suffragan plan, at some time later, but not now. And the heavy delegation that came down to Beaufort, to vote against the Suffragan, voted and went back, without accom¬ plishing its object, because we were led by a compromise man. The delicate feeling to save the situation, to save the Bishop's face, for that the Council compromised a principle, and the Bishop has taken advantage of it ever since. We have developed a peculiar diffidence. The Cali- fornians objected to the Japanese children in their public schools. They had a race feeling and they dared maintain it, and what is their race problem compared to ours ? It is now evident what the Bishop's policy has been, from the start, to taboo race feeling in his presence, in the Council, and in the Diocese, never to allow the subject to be discussed, in the Council as the radical departure that it is, never to allow any man to openly express his real thought, he and the General Church and the real Southern men, of Southern ideals, had already done our thinking for us. 8 At the Council, at Charleston, the Bishop said the Coun¬ cil, at Beaufort, was not opposed to the Suffragan plan, but only wanted time, in which to consider it, and at Greenville, he brought it up again, because the Council still wanted to consider it. But what had been the Bishop's attitude, at Beaufort? When he found himself confronted by overwhelming odds, he blandly said he bowed to the decision of the Council and accepted its verdict and asked the Council in lieu of the Suffragan, to give him five hundred dollars, for a colored Arch-Deacon of the Diocese, which the Council promptly did. And, if that worthy Arch-Deacon had not died un¬ timely, very possibly he might have been our Bishop. I confess I was at at loss to understand the action of the Honorable Richard I. Manning, at the Coun¬ cil, at Charleston, when he offered a resolution that a me¬ morial, from the Council, be addressed to the General Con¬ vention, requesting that, inasmuch as the Fourth Mission¬ ary Department, including a number of Southern Dioceses, had asked for Negro Bishops, of separate, racial jurisdic¬ tion, the matter be deferred, until the rest of the South could consider it and be heard from, and he then left the Council, left the town, it was said, before the subject could come up for discussion, as if he had placed a lighted bomb upon the floor of the Council, and then, had gotten out of harm's way, before it could explode. Tho', in the secular press, Mr. Manning's motion ap¬ peared to be in championship of white supremacy in the Episcopal Church, yet the resolution the committee brought in seemed to be so worded, or rather was so amended, as to commit this Diocese to the Suffragan plan as against the Racial Bishop plan, until, a tall, hard-headed banker of Charleston got up and curtly proposed that we say what we mean and mean the same thing, here and in the General Convention, and the resolution was so amended as to bring it more into conformity with the mind of the Council. When the hounds cry cheerfully on the false scent, or seem to be at fault and not to know their own minds, it is because there is not a reliable "strike-dog" in the pack. Whether the next Council will get back its natural eye¬ sight appears quite problematical. The Bishop so out¬ classed his Council, in will power, in brain power and in finesse, that what the Council would really like to do is no criterion of what it will do. 9 "What has been needed all along is one real man, with the courage of his own, honest convictions, and who does not fear the face of man and whom1 the Council will see does "catch the speaker's eye." During the past three years, the Suffragan movement has grown underground, in the Diocese. A zealous propa¬ ganda, "in all godly quitneiss," the teaching all one way, has accomplished wonders, and has gone far to prepare the Council for the Suffragan. But even so, the vote of the last Council was not a normal expression of the mind of the Diocese, nor even of the mind of the Council, supposing that distinguished body to have presumed to have a mind. Some people do not believe in ghosts, but the pale, ashy spectre of that threatened, Negro Bishop, of Separate Racial Jurisdiction was present, at the Council at Green¬ ville, and was seen and under control of the white Bishop, of course, he actually dominated the Council. The whole Council saw him, as plainly as ever Hamlet saw his father's ghost, and they actually took the ghost's word for a great deal more than a thousand pounds. They honored his sight draft, by voting, in favor of the Suffragan. Some, who did not want the Suffragan shrunk back affrighted at the shadowy image of the other kind, and some who, in their heart of hearts, were deeply opposed to any kind of Negro Bishops, in this Church, gladly voted for the Suffragan, to avert the coming doom. Three years ago, before the Council met, at Beaufort, the public was informed, through the Secular Press, that the Council was in favor of the Suffragan, but later, when the Council, met at Beaufort, it did not think it was. \ Before the last Council, it was reported far and wide that the Fourth Missionary Department, including seven Southern Dioceses, led by their bishops, had asked for Racial Negro Bishops, and it was thought, of course, those Southern Dioceses had done so, and some of us voted under that impression, but it now appears that no Southern Dio- ■cese, nor any other Diocese, voting through its council, has ever asked for any kind of Negro Bishop, or even expressed a preference for any, except the Diocese of South Carolina. When I was a boy and went to school I read in my history lesson that Colonel George Washington, I believe in the French and Indian war, came to take a fort that could only be taken by artillery, and artillery he had none. He mounted a pine log on wheels and planted it in front 10 of the fort and summoned the garrison to surrender and they surrendered. The Father of his Country, who cut the cherry tree, never told the French and Indians he had a cannon, it was they who* jumped too hastily to that con¬ clusion. The general convention has not voted yet, in favor of any kind of Negro Bishops, nor has it committed itself to such a policy for the future. The Commission now appointed tO' get the mind of the South may report, one way, or the other, or it may present al majority and a minority report, and there the matter hangs. But, they say, they are going to elect them! How do they know that? No man knows what a petit jury is going to do, or a Diocesan Council, much less a General Conven¬ tion of the Episcopal Church, and it was premature to cross the bridge, at Greenville. An unsophisticated terrapin, quietly sunning himself on an old cypress log, in a pond, on being told it is going to rain, precipitately scrambles overboard and drops into the water, to keep from getting wet. Which is the more to be admired, the brightness of the believing terrapin, or the astuteness of our saintly Bishop? So far as we can make out, the attitude of our Northern brethren, on the race problem, at the South, is "Strictly hands off!" "This is a Southern white man's question, let him settle it." The last General Convention was expected to favor Negro Bishops the House of Bishops: did, but the House of Deputies did not concur. The old *race feeling that precipitated the War between the States, and produced the Reconstruction Era, has well- nigh spent its force, and has left our Northern Brethren of saner and humaner minds, but the House of Bishops now constitutes itself the "Old Guard" of that great moral move¬ ment, whose work is not accomplished. The same old mailed hand in a religious glove, has now got its deadly, velvet grip upon this Diocese. But the House of Deputies is the strong wall of our pro¬ tection and the South need never fear having Negro Bis¬ hops forced upon her, unless she can be beguiled, or fright¬ ened, or religiously, gerrymandered into asking for them or, like this Diocese, goes about electing one, for herself, ahead of the procession. 11 The Southern Methodist Church, has given their Ne¬ groes, Bishops of their own color, but in a separate Negro Church; the Northern Methodist Church has great multi¬ tudes of Negroes, in the South, and has gotten them, with¬ out the saying grace of Negro Bishops, though she has frankly thrown out the gilded bait of social equality. These Methodist Negroes and their Friends of the Movement have been clamoring for Negro Bishops in the South for many years, and for thirty years or more the Northern Methodist General Conference has been just on the eve, and almost in the act of electing them, even as we are now, and the poor negroes themselves have been on tiptoe, just about to be allowed to "Break into the human race," but the rainbow still fondly clings to the distant horizon. Our House of Bishops is on fire, with race feeling, of the proper kind, and the whole Church is stirred tremen¬ dously—but let us wait until we see our Northern brethren, of the laity, electing a Negroid House of Bishops, for them¬ selves, to say nothing of a Poly-chromatic House of Depu¬ ties. But the Diocese, of.South Carolina, has already gone on record, to the rest of the South, and to the General Church and to all the world, as favoring the Negro Bishop- Suffragan, a Suffragan, at least, in preference to a Negro Bishop of a more portentous kind, and has actually taken steps for the election of a Negro Bishop Suffragan, of South Carolina. The Bishop might well tell us as he did after the vote was taken, that the 124th Council, of the Diocese of South Carolina had made history. If this be the divinely ordered course of human prog- res's, the Diocese of South Carolina gleams on the dark horizon, alone, a morning star. But if it be, as I believe it, a nefarious scheme against the social order of the South, and it prevails, then still she gleams alone the star of the evening. The fire that long has smoldered in the basement is now burst out upon the roof. I do not think the Negroes of this Diocese really want the Suffragan one-half as much as he is wanted for them. They voted in their Council, asking for him, it is true, but what did they understand would be his, status? Well, a leather-wing bat can be a- bird in one place and a mouse in another. The Bishop in his address before the colored Council, repudiated the shallow notion that the Suffragan is an inferior, or "puppet" Bishop and showed that the real dignity is in the Order, wherein the Negro Suffragan is not one whit inferior to the white Diocesan. 12 But to the white Council the Bishop says, "The Suf¬ fragan will be under me and if he should not prove satis¬ factory he may be retired, he will not sit in the white coun¬ cil, unless he is invited, there will be no personal point of contact, in other words, the Suffragan will be kept bottled up, and the bottle will be kept so tightly corked, that no unpleasant emanation can permeate the Diocese. I was talking with a noted Negro leader, who has had great and exceptional experience in handling and studying at first hand, the problem of the races, in this state, and who should know his own people, and what is and must be the relations of the two races, in this state, as well as1 any man alive. , He impressed me as a broad-minded, clear¬ headed and fair-minded man, and when I asked him whether he were for the Suffragan he answered, instantly, with the counter question, "What is he for?" I told him what the Bishop said he was for, to "Satisfy the natural cravings of the Negro race for some degree of recognition and leadership in the Church, and to provide an outlet for his racial ambitions and aspirations," and he said, "If he is really for that, I am for him." But he had evidently seen the bat for himself and he gave me what I took to be his sober opinion of the Suffragan, and it was. this, "He would be a beggar on horseback and would have no in¬ fluence among his own race." Bishop Reese, the Bishop of Georgia, who has been waiting patiently, for several years, for the Bishop of South Carolina to get his chestnuts out. of the fire, for him, has three of the ablest lawyers in the South to advise him, and he is going slowly and cautiously. His Council address nearly filled the front page of the Savannah' Press and it was announced, in big head lines, that he is against the Negro Bishop, which means he is against the Bogie Racial Bishop—which is Jiis cautious way of arguing for the Suffragan between the lines. If he can quietly turn a wheel within a wheel and lead the Negroes of his Diocese to lead him to believe they are in favor of the Suffragan and can so report them to his Council, and his Council 'can be led to vote overwhelmingly against the Racial Bishop, without saying anything about the Suffragan, his private purpose will be tactfully accomplished—the at¬ titude of his Council will be sufficiently defined as. favor¬ ing the Suffragan, in preference to the Racial Bishop, and can be so reported to the General Convention—whether the overwhelming majority, so voting, ever finds it out, or not. He condemns race feeling, the real barrier to any kind of Negro Bishop, North or South, and he seems irritated at 13 what he calls the old "stand-pat attitude" of the South stolidly opposed to any kind of Negro Bishops, and he tells them, incidentally, in his address, that if the Diocese of South Carolina does elect a Negro Bishop Suffragan, he might work in the Diocese of Georgia, If the Negro Bishop Suffragan of South Carolina should suffer persecution in his own Diocese, by reason of his 'color, he might go abroad, he would have the world be¬ fore him where to choose, and he might become a national figure, or even international, and his diocese might become distinguished, at home and abroad, as a colored kingdom that cometh "with observation." In reading an article by a military man undertaking to show that the relation of the races in Cuba is pretty much the same as in the Southern States, I took it with a grain of salt when I remembered, if my memory served me, that in their Revolution against Spain,' the insurgent forces were led by Negro officers of high rank. However, a Negro General, or Negro> Lieutenant Colonel might be explained away by the exigency of conditions, by what ingenious argument could the historic Diocese of South Carolina ever be able to explain away her "Father in God," the colored "Bishop-Suffragan of South Carolina?" I do not think either the Negroes, themselves, or the white people of the Diocese, want the Suffragan much, though both have been induced to say so in their Councils. A Negro Bishop, in a Negro Diocese, the Racial Bishop, is what the Negroes themselves have been praying for, many years. I do not know what Negroes have asked for the Suffragan, except the Negroes of this Diocese, and I can well imagine how they came to do so. At a time when I believe the Negroes sat in the white Councils of the South, Bishop Capers advocated the Racial Bishop plan, the segregation of the Negroes. But we are now told that a Canon of Nicea, forbids overlapping juris¬ dictions, which is the head and front, the real horns and hoofs, of our Racial Bishop bogie. Saint Peter and Saint Paul had overlapping jurisdic¬ tions, and we know they did not get along, but protably dear Bishop Capers never once thought of that. The Coun¬ cil of Nicea was 'Called by Constantine, at a time when the kingdoms of this world had just become the Kingdom of Christ and the visible church was just going on to become a kingdom of this world and the Canon itself seems rather to accord with the notion of a National Church, than with the earlier conception of a spiritual kingdom. The world 14 had entered the church and "the stream of Catholic teach¬ ing and tendency," from then on, was the union of Church and State—the centralization and commercialization of the Church. Bishop Guerry says we have given the Negroes every-- thing, except the Bishop, and they need the Bishop to make their organization complete. The logic of that argument calls for a separate Negro Diocese, at the very least, if not for a separate Negro Church, with the line of cleavage not geographical, but Racial, as of old. The Bishop says the Negro needs the guiding hand of the white man, and proposes to prove his doctrine, by turn¬ ing him over to the Suffragan. He will not have to put his own hands upon the Negro's kinky head, for we must re¬ member, it is the "personal point of contact," he is guard¬ ing so faithfully. Can it be? Well, we know "race feeling" is a quaint and complicated thing. The Bishop himself appeals to South¬ ern feeling, Southern race feeling at that, in picturing the snares and pitfalls, the satyrs and hobgoblins of the Racial Bishop plan. He says the strongest objection to it is that it will lead to Negroes sitting in the Synod, and shows how this very thing, Negroes sitting in the Council, came near disrupt¬ ing this Diocese some twenty-five years ago, and uses this bugaboo of Negroes sitting in a Synod, as'an argument in favor of a Negro Bishop of this Diocese. Now hear him, some three years ago, arguing for the Suffragan, before the Colored Council. "The real dignity is in the order rather than in the office." It is spiritual rather than temporal. It is in mis¬ sion rather than in jurisdiction. The Suffragan'has as com¬ plete a mission as the Diocesan." In speaking, not of the Suffragan, however, but of the Diocesan, he tells them what Mission is—"When a man is made a Bishop of the Church of God and set over a Diocese, he is the spiritual head and chief shepherd of every living man, white and black, with-, in his jurisdiction. In other words, the unity of God's fam¬ ily is represented by the Bishop and not by the Diocesan Council, or by any legislative or ecclesiastical body whatso¬ ever." What the Bishop says is absolutely true, the Negro will be the spiritual head of every living man, white and black, within this Diocese, over which the Holy Ghost hath made him Overseer, by virtue of his election and consecration. The Bishop says the Suffragan plan "Would satisfy the 15 natural cravings of the Negro race for some degree of recog¬ nition and leadership in the Church, and would provide just that outlet for his racial ambitions and aspirations which is needed to devfelop him as a race and to increase his love for the Church," and his words stand in the journal of this Council today, and will stand, as the charter of the Suffra¬ gans privilege to coming generations. According to what the Bishop told the Negroes, a Council or a Synod is a mere routine affair, for the trans¬ action of ^certain business, and yet in speaking to the white Council, he appeals to the fear of sitting by a Negro in a Synod, to lead us to favor putting a Negro Bishop over the Diocese, in spiritual supremacy, at least, in the face of what the principle involves; It is remarkable how illogical a man of logical mind can be when it suits his purpose and the complexion of his audience! No argument claiming that the Negro Bishop is wanted for the moral .or spiritual betterment of the Negro will bear investigation. He is wanted among them as a high digni¬ tary, sitting in the House of Bishops perhaps the most dis¬ tinguished and exclusive and powerful body of men in America, where his status is undisputed, and he himself the peer of any white man on the living earth. The Bishop, himself, has raised the question of social equality and it is the only valid argument that he has yet presented. He says he himself ''can not visit among them so'cially." Is that the genuine race feeling of the carnal mind, or is it a concession to the weak conscience of the Diocese? To rub elbows with Negro Bishops in a Negroid House of Bishops, as our Bishop longs to do, to give us a Negro Bishop of the Diocese to "rub elbows with occasion¬ ally, if we may be said to rub elbows with our betters, to whom we should order ourselves "lowly and reverently," to denounce race feeling,, to righteously abhor it and to teach us to abhor it, and then to refuse to visit a few re¬ spectable families of color, as their Chief Pastor, looks rather like straining at a gnat and incidentally giving his Diocese the camel. To reverence a man, as a Bishop of the Diocese and at the same time, to refuse to eat with him on account of his complexion is a feat of psychological gym¬ nastics that only a Southern Episcopalian could premedi¬ tate. The Negro Bishop is for the avowed purpose of allow¬ ing the Negro to "Break into the human race." A Negro will be out of his place, as a Bishop of our Diocese, accord- 16 ing to Southern ideals, and our ideals will have to undergo a metamorphosis, to get adjusted to the innovation and to produce that very change in our mental attitude toward the Negro, will be an important function of the Negro Bishop. The Negro Bishop is wanted to assert the equality of the races, in the Church, primarily, and everywhere else, eventually, first inwardly and spiritually, then outwardly and visibly. No other argument rings true, every other pretense is the merest clap-trap. For years the Anglican and American Churches have beeen making overtures of Church unity to all Christendom through their most sacred inheritance, the Historic Episco¬ pate—all of which irenic overtures, so far appear to have fallen practically still born. Now has been conceived the bright idea of giving it to the Negroes, so a Historic Bishop of their own race, comporting himself with dignity, can "visit among them socially," and as we are gravely told, the Historic Episcopate would "Help Episcopal Negroes socially," "and at big gatherings of Negroes and public speakings." Did ever mortal hear of such a means to such an end! Is that what the Historic Episcopate is for? "Ylet this is the best reason that can be given, where it would be highly inexpedient to give the real reason. For the time is not yet ripe for the public announce¬ ment of the Bishop's own personal, private, grape-vine prop- ganda, namely, "We can't convert a race that we ostracize,, socially, for it is a denial of the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God." If we can't convert the Negro while we ostracize him, socially, then we must recognize him, socially, in order to convert him, or else we are denying the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, Yet the Bishop is so opposed to any¬ thing, even remotely resembling social equality, that the bare mention of it, in his Diocese, disturbs'his equilibrum. So far as I >can make out, this pious scheme and holy movement is an organized hyprocrisy' in which some hon¬ est, but feeble-minded men appear to be webbed up. Bishop Guerry is no mere theorist, he is a practical sociologist, and he has already shown that he believes in using the Church, in his own Episcopality, for the Recon¬ struction of Society, according to his own conception of Christian Principles. It is evident from his utterances, and from those of Dr. Bragg, the Negro leader of the Movement, that anything 17 like class legislation in the Canonical Segregation of the Negroes, is not to be tolerated, for an instant, and, in "Putting the wisdom of the Church to a practical test," in public worship, "this Church's solution of the race prob¬ lem," following the lines of least resistance, may work it¬ self out in the South, as elsewhere in the Church. And the friends of the movement may work their will with us and .we must not say anything about it, or it will injure the Church. The Church is here, ostensibly, to bear witness of the Truth, yet, if our Lord should come, suddenly, unheralded, unaccredited to His temple, very possibly, He might be re¬ garded as a pernicious anti-clerical for the dry, unflattering light of the unadulterated truth might really prove injuri¬ ous to the Church, as a social and financial corporation, for when we hear this outcry of injury to the Church, we should discriminately bear in mind what kind of injury is meant. Bruno propounded the theory that the earth revolved around the sun, and he was burnt for his temerity, but Galielo, a more conservative and tactful churchman, promptly recanted the heresy, when he saw it was against the mind of the Church. "Wyckliffe translated the Bible into Latin, and was excommunicated, for his pains, but Tyndale, who translated it into English, and printed it, and distributed it, so that a plough-boy could read it, as well as the Pope, was hanged and burnt, because the open Bible, in the hands of the people threw a searching light upon the prevalent abuses of the Church of England—the new and strange doctrines, the stalled Bishops, servile to the Crown, arrogant to the people, lording it over gods of heritage, "Hating the light, lest their deeds should be re¬ proved." The prevailing type of ecclesiastical architecture is evidently^qjavi'dcd from that of the Troglodytae, who ad¬ mitted no light into their dwellings, and the lineal descend¬ ants of the Trogladytae are with us still, for the moral pulchritude of the Negro Bishop Movement could hardly fail to be suspected, unless this sacred mystery were jeal¬ ously kept and guarded, and piously viewed, in a very spec¬ ial, dim religious light. The leading clergy of the Diocese, who were, or had been unalterably opposed to the Suffragan plan, sat like automatons in the Council at Greenville and never opened their mouths—probably for private reasons of their own— contenting themselves with merely voting in the negative. 18 They and their kind could hardly be depended on to offer any serious opposition, if "This Church's solution of the race problem in the South," should take the turn of speckled congregations, in this Diocese. The only thing that could be depended on would be the individual con¬ science of the laity, without which, the vaunted mind of the Church is a pious fraud. But coming back to that egregious Council, at Green¬ ville, the Bishop solemnly warned the Council not to take counsel of their fears and lo! the Council has done that very thing, not the fear of social equality, however, but the fear of an imaginary Negro Bishop, in an imaginary Negro Diocese. The old levee that had stood the heavy weight of accumulated waters for half a century, and when they were far heavier than they are now, has sprang a-leak, at last, which, if not attended to, may widen to a crevasse and inun¬ date the South. Just how the break occurred, just at this point, whether from an old decayed stump, in the heart of the levee, or from a crawfish hole, tunneled through the base—and your levee crawfish is a master of Fabian tactics—or whether as an excited darkey once exclaimed, when he witnessed a crevasse, "De levee have absconded," whether from one or the other, or from a little of all three causes, is a story that should be told. Principles.no longer follow isothermal lines, and in this democratic age, the South is fast losing her narrow provincialism. Professor Trent, a Southern man, holding a chair at the University of the South, Sewanee, and having access to private records, published what has been considered a bitter arraignment of Southern institutions—and was duly trans¬ lated to a chair at Harvard. Professor Jordan, a Southern man, holding a chair in a Southern University, has lately published a book, advoca¬ ting miscegenation and hailing the Mulatto as the hope of the Negro race. A good many years ago, Mr. Murphy, a Sewanee man, and a close friend of Bishop Guerry, at Sewanee, published a book as, touching the race problem, thought to be con¬ siderably advanced, and very likely did we but know it, the seed of the present movement has been sown, by many waters, "while men slept." 19 I could not understand how some South Carolinians came to be so advanced, until I learned that the late Rev. Dr. A. Toomer Porter, a most worthy philanthropist, went up North, hat in hand, directly after the war, to beg money to educate the youth of impoverished Southern families, and, I believe, also the Negro youth, and they gave him liberally, of material things and, doubtless, also, of the spiritual as well, for the old "Porter Academy Boys," of that period, are now among the staunchest friends of the Suffragan Movement, in this Diocese, and more than one of the South¬ ern Bishops, now leading this crusade, to say nothing of our Southern Governor, appear to have derived their original inspiration from this venerable man. In this dual world, good and evil, wisdom and folly, in men and movements, seem, strangely, antithetically mixed. Very likely, the leaVen of our renaissance has been working quietly in this Diocese ever since Bishop Howe, a Northern Bishop of South Carolina, sent Dr. Porter" North, "Almost immediately after the war and long before the Sewanee Conference, to secure funds to push the work of evangelizing the ex-slaves, as rapidly as possible." In the General Convention of 1877 (just after the South had thrown off Radical rule) there was a proposal to have Suffragan Bishops "For races other than the European, and the report of the Committee that brought in this proposal was signed by Bishop Gregg, a distinguished South Caro¬ linian, and an early pioneer of the Negro Bishop Movement." "Then followed, as the result of the agitation for more effective work among the Negroes," the Sewanee Confer¬ ence, of 1883, "A conference of the Southern Bishops, and of certain, "carefully selected," priests and laymen, among whom were Bishop Howe, then Bishop of South Carolina, and Rev. Dr. Porter." The Sewanee Conference con¬ demned the Racial Bishop plan, but brought forth the Negro Arch-Deacon plan. But the Negro Churchmen were not satisfied with that, and continued to agitate, until, as a result, the Suffragan plan took shape in the brain of a South Carolinian, an old pupil of Dr. Porter and a Vice-Chancellor of Sewanee. The Canon, admitting Suffragans, which passed the General Convention, in 1907, says not a word of Negro Suff¬ ragans, but, as Bishop Guerry claims, there seems to have been a private understanding and an ulterior end in view, among the friends of the movement, for we are . told it gave them exactly what they wanted, it gave the right of way to the Negro Suffragan and gave the Negro Bishop 20 Suffragan plan, the endorsement of the Church. The General Convention did not know it was endorsing the Negro Suffra¬ gan plan, or forwarding the Negro< Suffragan Move¬ ment, but the friends of the movement knew. When the iota subscript was quietly inserted in "homoousion," there were sundry "nods and winks," and perhaps there is "Catholic precedent" for sailing under false colors and stealing gleefully by frowning batteries, in the. cause of righteousness and truth. As Bishop Guerry has pointed out, the Suffragan Move¬ ment (like the charge of the French at Waterloo, in solid column, into the sunken road), is a continuous, progressive, irreversible movement. "We can not stop the agitation if we would,'' but every step we take morally necessitates the next. The initiative of South Carolina is proudly claimed, and can not be denied. The rest of the Southern States promptly followed South Carolina in the secession movement, but the rest of the Southern Dioceses have hung back, unaccountably, in following the lead of the Diocese of South Carolina, in the Negro Bishop Movement. Bishop Guerry was chaplain at Sewanee, twenty years ago, and by this time his principles should be known, in South Carolina. Even then, he had a vision of the Mission of this Church, in the regeneration of the South. The Roman Catholic Church, with its real head across the water, keeps the Negro in a state of pupilage. The Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians were divided, the Northern from the Southern, by the race question, and had set the Negroes off, into separate Churches of their own. This Church, with its real hegemony in the land of moral ideas, and with the white and colored people of the South together in the Church, held a unique position of glorious opportunity and held a sacred trust and had an obvious duty, that no other religious body, in the land, was in a position to discharge, and now in the fullness of time, he is proceeding to lead us into this open door. And this Diocese elected him as a native South Caro¬ linian and as a Southerner, of the Southerners, to be her Bishop and her leader and her guide, and who shall say she has not hitched her wagon to a star? When the scallawag took charge, the carpet-bagger was relegated to the rear, and looked on in humble admiration. 21 At the opening of the late Council, at Greenville, the Rt. Rev. Albion 0. Knight, D. D., the late Bishop of Cuba, now Vice-Chancellor of the University of the South, Se- wanee, delivered an address on Christian Education. He said State Universities were narrow. They could not give the broad education that Sewanee does. They could not teach the truth about those principles that were held at the South, before the war, and that precipitated the war. He said he had received a letter from one Professor, I believe, in a State University, who wanted to come to Sewanee, where he could teach the truth about them. The truth about those principles may be one thing or another, though it is hardly probable that Sewanee is teaching the doctrine of States Rights and the Scriptural Defense of Slavery. Sewanee has been begging, at the North ever since she was born and she has been on her knees for lo these many years, praying for an endowment. We hope she may receive an adequate endowment to< continue to broaden the mind of the South, and we hope the Church may hasten to fulfill her mission in the South.' And as Missionary Priests, with a sense of our mission and our dependence, we draw our stipends and vote for one kind of Negro Bishops or the other, looking for a new heaven and a new earth in the South, whose builder and maker is the Almighty Dollar. That Council at Greenville was swept by a suffocating wave of the new race feeling, a race feeling bitterly intoler¬ ant of every kind except its own, which set strongly all in one direction, and met no opposition, but silent, impotent resentment. The human race, in its moral development, has both thought and felt its way, reason and conscience go hand in hand. The offending "caste system,'' of the old South, is the ripened and garnered fruit of reason, observation and experience. In its original genesis, and for its preservation and enforcement, it rests upon 4' caste feeling,'' or race feel¬ ing, and nothing else, which is a moral instinct, as natural and ineradicable as any other, written by the finger of God, on the human heart. It has kept many a Southern youth out of the slime pit, and it has been the only protection to the dignity and decency of Southern Society since the War. Just as our color line is built of race feeling, so a levee is built of dirt; just solid dirt, and nothing else. There was a decayed stump, there was a crawfish hole, but, so far as I could make out, so far as that Council at Greenville was concerned, the whole levee just "absconded." But the Apostle tells us about a storm at sea, in which he was shipwrecked. He said the ship fell into a place 22 where two seas met and so ran aground. I think that Coun¬ cil will fall into some such place as that. If it does not, the Episcopal Church in this Diocese and possibly in the South, will ultimately find itself in exactly that position. As I sat and looked upon that Council—the Bishop in the Chair, and speaking excathedra, from time to time,—I had an impression of an angel riding upon the storm and directing, guiding and controlling' it at every turn, by the occult force of personal volition, though I thought I caught a glimpse of the reins, a time or two. The Council at Charleston had passed a resolution re¬ questing that a list of all important matters to come before the Council should be sent out to the delegates a month in advance of the meeting of the Council, which, accordingly, was done. But the list contained no notice of, by far, the most important matter to be brought before the Council,— the question of the Suffragan, and when the Bishop brought it up before the Council in his Council address, to me and to many, it was a bolt out of the blue. Some knew it was coming up, were notified in fact, and some were not and possibly more than one important Parish, through a single representative voted in favor of the Suffragan, most unin¬ tentionally. "When, in view of the fact, that no notice had been given and, of the further fact, that the attendance at the Council was unusually small, less than half the parishes and mis¬ sions being represented, a resolution was offered that the Suffragan question be deferred, to the next Council, the Bishop objected to it. He said he could not know a month in advance what matters he would bring before the Council, as for instance, the appointment of lay readers and the Sun¬ day School Committee, and the mover of the resolution was put to the bad, for the plastic touch of the Bishop, upon his Council, is like the supernatural. It was argued on the floor, that not the members of the Council, who were absent from the Council, in dereliction of their duty, not the people of the State, nor of the Diocese, but the members, actually present, should decide this ques¬ tion, rather in contravention of what the Bishop, himself, had told us, at the beginning of the movement, "The Church of God is not like a political body, in which bare majorities should rule." The majority, as it turned out, was hand¬ some enough, but I do not know exactly how political majorities are obtained. In. view of the progress of the movement, and how it has progressed the past three years, here is an interesting study, in psychology: 23 "We may err through pride, or self will, but as God, who knows the secrets of all hearts is my witness, I am ready now to sacrifice any plan, or any position I have ever taken, if it can be clearly shown that it interferes with, or hinders, the progress of Christ's kingdom, through the Church.'' "The only way to stop the agitation is to give the agita¬ tors what they want,'' quoth the Bishop. If ever I have seen an imperious will that brooks no opposition, I have seen it within the last three years. "Give him an inch and he will take an ell," so far, has been a striking characteristic of the movement, in this diocese, which shows how this powerful bacillus affects the Southern blood, and bodes no good for the Co-Episcopate -of this Diocese, for the future. It was moved to go into Committee of the Whole, where the subject of the Suffragan could be freely and openly dis¬ cussed without embarrassment, but, possibly with the mem¬ ory of that Committee of the Whole, at Beaufort, still in Mind, the Bishop from the Chair, objected on the ground that it would take up too much time, and "An irrevelent issue might be introduced." The Bishop thought everybody should be allowed to speak, and not a few individuals be permitted to monopolize the floor, in accordance with which the speakers were limited to ten minutes. The Bishop probably knew the purpose and scope and character of a movement of half a century could hardly be revealed in ten minutes, and that such a revelation is the real danger the movement has to dread. Any man, who is free to form an independent opinion, can see, at a glance that a Negro Bishop of a White Diocese involves the principle of Negro Supremacy, in that Diocese. The law of gravity may be inferred from the falling of an apple, but it would require a wider generalization than could be made in ten minutes to demonstrate the principle involved, and any real argument, even for ten minutes against the Suffragan plan, would have been personal to the Bishop, in the Chair, and, defacto out of order. The Bishop announced to the Council that it was no longer a question of Negro Bishops, in the Church, but of which kind of Negro Bishops. The average human mind believes in some infallible authority. The Roman Catholic believes his Pope, the Pro¬ testant believes his Bible, the Episcopalian believes his Bishop and such a divinity doth hedge a Bishop that by the 24 Bishop's ipse dixit, the discussion was practically closed to a discussion of the two kinds of Negro Bishops, for we seemed to be shut up to the alternative of choosing between the two. To have opened the fundamental question of hav¬ ing any kind of Negro Bishops at all, would have been as audacious as "Oliver" asking for "more." This is the Church of religious liberty, but it still bears an ear-mark of madeivalism. The Pope first gets the mind of the Church, and is then Infallible, speaking as the Head and Mouth-piece of the Church. But this Council may be widely accredited as, an oracle, speaking practically, as but little more than the mouth-piece, or megaphone, of the Bishop. That debate, if debate it could be called, went on through morning and afternoon sessions and got no whither, as "Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." There was no argument that could be answered, for through the weary hours, those ten minutes' ululations of warm desire, for one kind of Negro Bishop, or the other rose into the air, a noble eloquence, as invincible as that ancient argument, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." This form of reasoning, like the Matabele tom-tom, is more powerful, in practice, than it appears in theory, and the friends of the Movement kept it up, until the Council was completely metagrobilized. Once upon a time, a man who wanted to buy a lamb to sacrifice to Diana was offered a mangy cur, absolutely guaranteed to be a beautiful lamb. He, at first, refused to buy it, but all the bystanders extolled it so highly, and so descanted upon its beauty, that the honest man became con¬ fused, and, distrusting his own opinion—I do not know whether he was a priest, or a layman, bought it and offered it in sacrifice to the Goddess, who was properly indignant and smote him with a sore disease. That is somewhat the way the thing was done, at Greenville. The Negro Bishop Suffragan and the Negro Racial Bishop made the air we breathed. I did not believe in the ghost the Bishop had conjured up, but, in that strange atmosphere, a vague, faint, elusive, yet strangely familiar odor filled the air and turned me deathly sick. I afterward discovered it was a privet hedge in bloom, outside the Church, it may have been the privet, impalably mingled in the stale overpowering odor of self-conscious, New England sanctity. And I said in my heart, "This Council is a conservatory! Somebody must break a pane of glass and let in fresh air from the outer Diocese or in this Council, a Southern man will 25 be as out of place, as a modest woman in the smartest set of problematical society. One layman, of superior intelligence, said to me, "The Bishop is the general, in the field, and an expert on the subject. I think I can trust my Bishop." He was a thoroughbred, Protestant Episcopalian, sitting and voting purely as a matter of form and ceremony. What was he voting for, and what is the Council for and what is any Council for, but to hold the Bishop down when he gets his head among the stars? This trusting disposition may be carried to extreme. One very pious, aged clergyman rose in the Council, and solemnly lifting both hands, cried feelingly, "We can trust the Negro! We can trust the Negro!" He did not seem to realize that trusting a Negro servant, before the war, and trusting a Negro Bishop, of South Carolina, of the 20th century, are two different things. One honest, down-right thorough-going parson, whose candor was refreshing amid so much hugger-mugger, not being native here and therefore viewing our institutions, not "in medias res," but "e superiore lo