ABSTRACT
I Received a shock on my first visit to America in 1893 from which I have never recovered. I was lecturing at Yale, and I asked if I might meet the coloured students of the University ; they came, and I had a long talk with them. They told me what they had to face “ at ” the South, and one of them gave an instance which produced this ineffaceable impression. An open-air preacher concluded his address by inviting all to come to Christ, and suggested that they might show their intention by coming forward and shaking hands with him. A negro in the crowd responded to the invitation and stepped forward ; but the preacher, a Christian preacher, a preacher of Christ, who had been speaking Christ’s message to men, met him by saying that dark men were not included. This power of prejudice and the lengths to which it can carry men professing to be Christian not only horrified me at the time, but led me to the conviction that Christ’s whole purpose was being frustrated by our racial antagonisms and colour prejudices.
