sons. Very many of thesehave been created by distinct church societies, and are under their care and sustenance.
The colored people have over 70 churches and church organizations, and yet we have the saddening fact that these churches have failed, with hardly an exception, to care for their own poor, their widows, their diseased members, and their orphans. We build large churches; we are constantly dividing and sub-dividing our church organizations, and uprearing new and costly church edifices. Thousands and tens of thousands of dollars are constantly spent upon new church buildings; and poor people, in lanes and alleys, are almost exhausted, in meeting the demands for churches and chapels, which are almost annually erected, for splits and divisions; but never a dollar do we hear of, as expended for an orphanage, or a hospital, built by a colored church, for the needy and the destitute. There is, I learn, one Home for Colored Girls, on Erie street, Mrs. R. L. Waring, President; and as far as I can learn, no other of like kind; but this was not originated by any church, nor is it carried on under the auspices of any church,
4. Now all this, I maintain, is somewhat shameful. We are a population of 75,000 people. We have 72 church organizations; but mercifulness, an organic element in the religion of Jesus, and one of the most distinct features of the Holy Faith, is wanting in our Christianity. I am asked, perchance, the reasons for this indifference to works of charity in our churches.
I feel sensitively the delicacy of this query. At the same time I cannot doubt the duty and the necessity of exploring every province of a subject which pertains, so closely to the glory of Christ, the advancement of His kingdom, and to the piety of a new and advancing people.
Unless I happen to fall into one of the deepest of errors our delinquency, in the charitable movements of the age, is owing very considerably to the flavor of our piety. That piety I believe to be true and genuine; but I fear it is seriously defective in some of the essentials of spirituality.
5. I apprehend that any analysis of the religious character of the colored people in America will serve to show that
