20
Separation or Continuity, WhicM
CHAPTER IV.
THE LOYALTY OF THE COLORED MEMBERSHIP.
E HAVE stood firmly by the Old Mother, no one cart.
truthfully deny; even amid all the criticisms and
unbrotherly treatment we have received from other teligious-
bodies. We have advocated, boldly and with delight, the broad
Christian principles of the Methodist Episcopal Church. We
have been true to the old Church if the truth is told concerning
us. Are we to be considered a source of evil because we have
manhood and think that it ought to be respected ? If manhood
does anything it certainly develops individuals, nations and
churches. Is it unnatural for us to have it simply because we
are colored ? Bishop Foster in his book seems to challenge the
least manifestation of manhood in the colored members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. Is it disloyalty to be manly ?
Bishop Hurst says in his address before the General Con¬
ference of 1888, at the mass meeting of the Freedman's Aid and
Southern Education Society, " that it was thought that our
colored members might not be true to our church. We have
no truer members on our Church Record than our colored
members. They love our doctrines and our polity, and rejoice
in our History."
The colored members of the Methodist Episcopal Church
have been loyal for more than a century. Some have wondered
how we could remain loyal so long. There has been something
about the church that has won the heart of many of the men
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