ABSTRACT
The old-time [colored} preachers . . . who hold such a strong sway over the people, see in the coming change the waning of their power, and naturally resist its coming. The people themselves, reveling in the happy ecstasy of their enkindled emotions, and hugging their vices, which are undisturbed thereby, naturally also repel the hght that chills their enjoyment and rebukes their sins. Their religion cherishes the old vices inherited from slavery, and welcomes the new ones that come in with freedom. There is always a danger to a people breaking a way from the old moorings of their faith. When the cables are cut, the drifting is apt to be into the shoals of skepticism. Especially is this liable to happen when a people of ardent temperanient are called to pass from a warm superstition into a colder faith and a more exacting morality.
