9. In the Camp of Salvation (Cont.)

Not far from the white camp a black one was situated. The tents there were as white as here, but only the faces of their inhabitants were black. This was a camp of the “colored” people or Negroes. On Sunday evening I happened to be present at their service. On a green clearing was arranged a black mass, and in its midst rose the figure of a black preacher. The clothes were gay with various colors, and some “colored ladies” were dressed entirely in white, but this only made their black faces stand out more. In the dim of night this mass presented a strange sight: as if the whole assembly was without heads, and only the gleam of the whites of their eyes showed the discerning viewer what was going on. Eyes on the faces of the colored people are like stars in the midnight sky. The service consisted of hymns and a sermon. Being for the most part Methodists, the Negroes use the common Methodist hymns in their worship; but they have their own too, and the latter are especially energetically taken up by Negro voices and especially sweetly resound in Negro hearts. They belong to Negro poets, who alone could with their poetic genius grasp all the depth of the Negro heart and express its feeling in wonderfully Negro verses. The forests and hills all around trembled and marveled when the colored people sang one of their favorite hymns:

“Jesus[1], give me to wash in the river,

Give me to wash in the river,

In the river, in the river, in the river, in the river,

In the river, in the river,—river.

Jesus, give me to love the sister,—in the river,

Give me to wash in the river,

In the river, in the river, in the river, in the river,

In the river, in the river,—river” and so forth.

After several such hymns the colored preacher came forward with a speech. The colored people here speak English, though with an African accent which in pronunciation recalls the rough abruptness of our Kazan Tatars. The preacher was a true shepherd of his people and spoke with the same accent, not a little troubling for a foreigner to understand English. I, however, listened attentively and penetrated the secret of the Negro word. The preacher, among other things, said: “God created the earth. He created the sun, the moon, and the stars. He created only one sun, one moon, and one earth. Why did He not create two suns, two moons, and two earths? This is a mystery which we do not know. It puzzled Plato and Demosthenes and all the great learned men. Even Moses did not know this mystery, and he was the greatest historian who ever lived on earth. He was educated in Egypt among the colored people and was their friend—yes, their friend, the best they ever had.” Passing then to the New Testament, the preacher continued: “What was Jesus? He was the Son of God. Some ancient chronologists of old say that He was a Jew. I don’t care what He was, whether He was a Jew, or an Indian, or an Arab, or a colored man. I know one thing: He was eternal and lives in eternity. The sun is not eternal; the moon is not eternal: this earth on which we dwell, on which we stand now, is not eternal; the angels are not eternal: they will die in time, and we shall all die; all great men have died. But He is eternal. Yes, brothers, God alone is eternal. Do you understand this, my friends?” A tremor of emotion visibly ran through the colored people, and a choral “amen!” again and again confirmed and approved the orator’s utterances. At the end of the sermon the hills and valleys trembled again from the ecstatic songs of the colored people.