the merely dogmatic teaching of the Dissenters: we do not
believe that the mere Negro really comprehends one of those
propositions, whether true or false, Catholic or Calvinist, which
have been elaborated by the intellect and the emotions of races who
have gone through a training unknown to the Negro. With all respect
for those who disseminate such books, we think that the Negro can no
more conceive the true meaning of an average Dissenting Hymn-book,
than a Sclavonian of the German Marches a thousand years ago could
have conceived the meaning of St. Augustine's Confessions. For what
we see is this--that when the personal influence of the white
missionary is withdrawn, and the Negro left to perpetuate his sect
on democratic principles, his creed merely feeds his inordinate
natural vanity with the notion that everybody who differs from him
is going to hell, while he is going to heaven whatever his morals
may be.'

If a Roman Catholic priest should say all this, he would at least
have a right, I believe, to a respectful hearing.

Nay, more. If he were to say, 'You are afraid of our having too
much to do with the education of the Negro, because we use the
Confessional as an instrument of education. Now how far the
Confessional is needful, or useful, or prudent, in a highly
civilised and generally virtuous community, may be an open matter.
But in spite of all your English dislike of it, hear our side of the
question, as far as Negroes and races in a similar condition are
concerned. Do you know why and how the Confessional arose? Have
you looked, for instance, into the old middle-age Penitentials? If
so, you must be aware that it arose in an age of coarseness, which
seems now inconceivable; in those barbarous times when the lower
classes of Europe, slaves or serfs, especially in remote country
districts, lived lives little better than those of the monkeys in
the forest, and committed habitually the most fearful crimes,
without any clear notion that they were doing wrong: while the
upper classes, to judge from the literature which they have left,
were so coarse, and often so profligate, in spite of nobler
instincts and a higher sense of duty, that the purest and justest
spirits among them had again and again to flee from their own class
into the cloister or the hermit's cell.

'In those days, it was found necessary to ask Christian people
perpetually--Have you been doing this,