Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/431

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HOMES OF THE NEW WORLD.
417

warm towards the interests of their captive brethren, and especially so as regards colonisation in Liberia. Frederick Douglas is as yet the only strong champion among them for their own people.

But if anything can awake within them a more comprehensive feeling for the whole people, it is assuredly that common slavery on the soil of America, and perhaps more than anything else at this moment, the bill which allows the recapture of fugitive slaves. I awoke to this thought to-day during a visit to a free negro church, where I had no occasion to lament any want of interest in the national affairs, either in the negro preacher or the congregation.

I had in the forenoon visited a negro Baptist church belonging to the Episcopal creed. There were but few present, and they of the negro aristocracy of the city. The mode of conducting the divine service was quiet, very proper, and a little tedious. The hymns were beautifully and exquisitely sung. The sermon, which treated of “Love without dissimulation; how hard to win, how impossible without the influence of God and the communication of his power,” was excellent. The preacher was a fair Mulatto, with the features and demeanour of the white race, a man of very good intellect and conversational power, with whom I had become already acquainted in my Cincinnati home.

In the afternoon I went to the African Methodist Church in Cincinnati, which is situated in the African quarter. In this district live the greater number of the free-coloured people of the city; and the quarter bears the traces thereof. The streets and the houses have, it is true, the Anglo-American regularity, but broken windows and rags hanging from them, a certain neglected, disorderly aspect, both of houses and streets, testified of negro management. I found in the African church African ardour and African life. The church was full to

VOL. II.
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