oint
is lucidly elaborated in a late article, of great interest, in _The
Edinburgh Review_, said to have been written by a negro escaped from
slavery. The negro's _docility_ appears in his aptitude to catch quickly
the tone of his master's mind, and guide himself by it; in the readiness
with which he yields to superior authority--which may or may not be due
to his spirit-crushing bondage, but which certainly has in it little of
the stupidity we should expect to find if such were the case. The
_buoyancy of his spirit_ overflows in the perpetual music of his laugh
and song amid the hard fortunes of his race. The fulness of his
_capacity of affection_ is attested by his remarkable devotion to master
or mistress, surviving strong amid all vicissitudes, and rising above
the iniquitous injustice that holds him in bonds into that exalted
triumph of the apostle's doctrine: 'Be not overcome of evil, but
overcome evil with good.' As for his _readiness to apprehend spiritual
things_, the experience of every person who has lived at the South
furnishes abundant proof. Who that has stood on the banks of a Southern
river, when a negro was baptized, and heard the loud chorus of joy of
his brethren and sisters when the sign of the Church was put upon him,
and seen the sympathy of eye and hand that welcomed him to the blessed
company, has not felt that for this poor, despised race there are riches
laid up in that kingdom 'where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves do not break through nor steal'? Who that has stood in a
Southern forest on some Sunday afternoon, in the early Southern spring,
when the woods are resonant with the songs of birds, and heard a negro
congregation of believers in their meeting-house near by, joining with
all the fervor of their tropical temperament in this glad hymn of
nature, in the immortal verse of Wesley and Whitfield, has not felt that
to the negro the vision of the New Jerusalem is more of a reality than
has yet been granted to his worldly favored white brother and master?
Ah, no one who has witnessed such scenes all the years of his childhood
and youth, can deny that among the disciples of Christ are to be
reckoned especially the negro race; who bear His blessed cross in our
day, amid the jeers of a sceptical world, just as in His own day upon
earth the negro Simon of Cyrene bore to the Mount of Calvary the cross
on which the Saviour died.

What these things prove is just this: the negro'