554 ' CHURCHES. 



niini])crs ure Baptist, and next come the Methodists, but there are also 

 Presbyterian and Episcopal churches among them. They are easily 

 susceptible to profound religious emotions, and each individual seems to 

 realize vividly his immediate personal relations with the Author and 

 Ruler of all things. It is this personal and individual character of their 

 religious sentiments which has prevented the establishment among them 

 on any extended scale of a hierarchy or priesthood. Their preachers have 

 great influence with them, but this the more because they are representa- 

 tive men chosen by themselves from among their number, than on ac- 

 count of their priestly character. Their religious services are, for the 

 most part, conducted without a liturgy, but voluntary responses and 

 frequent ejaculations attest that each feels he has, of his own right, a 

 share and interest in them. 



This will also explain why separate and independent church organiza- 

 tions as are practicable under the Baptist form of worship, should have 

 greater attractions for them than the more centralized and elaborately 

 organized systems of the Catholics and Episcopalians. Despite the in- 

 junction "judge not," it has been asserted that the morality of the ne- 

 groes is not in proportion to their religious fervor. A class marked as 

 distinctly by their inferior social position as they are by race, invites such 

 charges, which are far more sweeping than just. If morality be the fruit 

 of religion it is not surprising, wonderful as the progress made by the 

 African in South Carolina has been, that it has not in one century and 

 a half attained that maturity among the colored race which has been the 

 result of nearly nineteen centuries of Christian teachings to the European. 

 Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that any people ex- 

 hibit in a higher degree that instinctive faith in the existence of absolute 

 justice, truth, and goodness, which marks the capacity of human nature 

 alike for religion and for morality, than the colored people of this State 

 do. Space does not admit of a delineation here of the attitude of the 

 Christian churches to the colored race in Carolina. It is safe to say, how- 

 ever, that the ecclesiastical polity announced recent!}'- at a conference of 

 the Episcopal clergy and laity, of preserving the unity of the church or- 

 ganization, by receiving on equal terms the clerical and lay deputies of 

 the colored race into the Diocesan Conventions, will meet Avith encour- 

 agement, at least from that portion of the former masters of these people, 

 who are usually stigmatized as Bourbons. 



The following table exhibits the general condition of the church in 

 Carolina as compared with those of the United States as far as given by 

 the census records of 1850, 18G0, and 1870. Unfortunately the figures of 

 the enumeration of 1880, which are essential to complete the picture, are 

 not at this date accessible. 



