14 BLACK BAPTIST PREACHER. [Cn^p. XX. 



vannah. Next day, I attended afternoon service in a Baptist 

 church at Savannah, in which I found that I was the only white 

 man, the congregation consisting of about COO negroes, of various 

 shades, most of them very dark. As soon as I entered I was 

 shown to a seat reserved for strangers, near the preacher. First 

 the congregation all joined, both men and women, very harmoni 

 ously in a hymn, most of them having evidently good ears for 

 music, and good voices. The singing was followed by prayers, 

 not read, but delivered without notes by a negro of pure African 

 blood, a gray-headed venerable-looking man, with a fine sonor 

 ous voice, named Marshall. He, as I learnt afterward, has the 

 reputation of being one of their best preachers, and he concluded 

 by addressing to them a sermon, also without notes, in good style, 

 and for the most part in good English ; so much so, as to make 

 me doubt w r hether a few ungramrnatical phrases in the negro 

 idiom might not have been purposely introduced for the sake of 

 bringing the subject home to their family thoughts. He got very 

 successfully through one flight about the gloom of the valley of 

 the shadow of death, and, speaking of the probationary state of 

 a pious man left for a while to his own guidance, and when in 

 danger of failing saved by the grace of God, he compared it to an 

 eagle teaching her newly fledged offspring to fly, by carrying it 

 up high into the air, then dropping it, and, if she sees it falling 

 to the earth, darting with the speed of lightning to save it before 

 it reaches the ground. Whether any eagles really teach their 

 young to fly in this manner, I leave the ornithologist to decide ; 

 but when described in animated and picturesque language, yet by 

 no means inflated, the imagery was well calculated to keep the 

 attention of his hearers awake. He also inculcated some good 

 practical maxims of morality, and told them they were to look to 

 a future state of rewards and punishments in which God would 

 deal impartially with &quot; the poor and the rich, the black man and 

 the w r hite.&quot; 



I went afterward, in the evening, to a black Methodist church, 

 where I and two others were the only white men in the whole 

 congregation ; but I was less interested, because the service and 

 preaching was performed by a white minister. Nothing in my 



