Or, A Colored Man's Reply to Bishop Foster. 6r
CHAPTER XII.
REASONS FOR CONTINUATION.
E do not desire to be misunderstood in our considera¬
tion of this chapter. We shall not plead for contin¬
uation at the sacrifice of any manly principle but upon the
ground of our inherent right in the Methodist Episcopal Church,
and the result of race division. The doors of the Methodist
Episcopal Church (when she was a mere babe in America) were
thrown open to all mankind regardless of race or color. The
colored man did not refuse to enter but at once cast his lot
with the ridiculed society called "Methodist." And now because
we are rising and the handful of Methodists of a century ago
have become mighty among the mighty branches of the Chris¬
tian Church we are advised to surrender our claim in order that
a seceded sister or daughter might be forced back into union
with the mother of American Methodisms.
We are threatened wirh the impossibility of recognition in the
high offices of the Church and that on the ground that our col¬
or and not fitness will be the barrier against us. We suppose
that Bishop Foster is trying the pulse of the 250,000 colored
members to see whether they are going to be silly enough to
withdraw from the Church without a pretty thorough sifting of
things. We have been in the Church too long to even allow a
bishop in his thunder and lightning to excite us to the extent
that we will gladly leave our rightful inherit '.nee in order that
we might set up a standard of our own. We are not all slow to
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