CHAP. XXXVL] BLACK METHODIST CHUCRH. 213 



no small indignation. I had heard, in the course of my travels, 

 several discourses equally at variance with the spirit of the 

 Reformation, but none before in which the Reformation itself 

 was so openly denounced, and I could not help reflecting on the 

 worldly wisdom of those who, wishing in the middle of the nine 

 teenth century, to unprotestantize the members of a reformed 

 church, begin their work at an age when the mind is yet un 

 formed and plastic dealing with the interior of the skull as 

 certain Indian mothers dealt with its exterior, when they bound 

 it between flat boards, and caused it to grow, not as nature 

 intended, but into a shape which suited the fashion of their tribe. 

 In the evening we were taken, at our request, to a black 

 Methodist church, where our party were the only whites in a 

 congregation of about 400. There was nothing offensive in the 

 atmosphere of the place, and I learned, with pleasure, that this 

 commodious building was erected and lighted with gas by the 

 blacks themselves, aided by subscriptions from many whites of 

 different sects. The preacher was a full black, spoke good En 

 glish, and quoted Scripture well. Occasionally he laid down 

 some mysterious and metaphysical points of doctrine with a dog 

 matic air, and with a vehement confidence, which seemed to increase 

 in proportion as the subjects transcended the human understand 

 ing, at which moments he occasionally elicited from his sympa 

 thizing hearers, especially from some of the women, exclama 

 tions such as &quot; That is true,&quot; and other signs of assent, but no 

 loud cries and sobs, such as I had heard in a white Methodist 

 church in Montgomery, Alabama. It appeared from his explan 

 ation of &quot; Whose superscription is this ?&quot; that he supposed the 

 piece of money to be a dollar note, to which Caesar had put his 

 signature. He spoke of our ancestors in the garden of Eden in 

 a manner that left no doubt of his agreeing with Dr. Prichard, 

 that we all came from one pair a theory to which, for my own 

 part, I could never see any ethnological or physiological objection, 

 provided time enough be allowed for the slow growth of races ; 

 though I once heard Mr. A. W. Schlegel, at Bonn, pronounce it 

 to be a heresy, especially in an Englishman who had read the 

 &quot; Paradise Lost.&quot; &quot; I could have pardoned Prichard,&quot; said the 



