274 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



down there out of a hungry man. I have tried it a good 

 many times. As long as a fellow is hungry, I don't count 

 much on his Christianity. 



As a race we are rather emotional. You can beat us at 

 thinking, but the average colored man will feel as much in 

 ten minutes as the average white man in an hour. We feel 

 our religion in the south, as you do not. When the negro 

 gets converted, he wants to get up and jump around a 

 little, and manifest his feeling visibly ; and if he doesn't 

 do it, we get kind of skeptical about his religion, and say 

 he has the white man's religion. Our emotional side of 

 life gets us into awkward positions. Not long ago, in the 

 south, an old colored woman went to an Episcopal church 

 one Sunday morning, and they gave her a seat in the gal- 

 lery. As the good rector began to get worked up to a 

 considerable degree of eloquence, the old colored woman 

 began to feel good, happy, and she commenced to clap her 

 hands and groan a little, and say amen. One of the officers 

 of the church came to her, and he said : " My good woman, 

 what is the matter with you? What are you making all 

 this noise about?" She said: "Why, I am happy; I'se 

 got religion." " Got religion," he said ; "Why, this is no 

 place to get religion." 



Now, seriously, my friends, this emotional side of our 

 life tempts us to spend a great deal of time getting ready 

 for life in the next world, and overlooking the things of this 

 world. In Louisiana, on one of those sugar plantations, they 

 have an old song which they sing at revivals, — " Give me 

 Jesus, give me Jesus, and you take all this world." Well, 

 the white man down there takes the negro at his word every 

 time. I do not speak irreverently, but after eating and 

 sleeping with my people, coming into contact with them by 

 night and by day during nearly twenty years, I think I have 

 learned that the way to teach them to have the most of Jesus, 

 and have Him in their daily lives, is to teach them to mix 

 in houses and farms and banks, just as a white man docs, — 

 mix the practical, cvery-day affairs of life in with their re- 

 ligion ; and in proportion as we teach them those lessons, 

 we can point } r ou to whole communities that are on their 



