A. P. S[mith] to Frederick Douglass, August 25, 1858

FROM OUR NEW JERSEY CORRESPONDENT.

SADDLE RIVER, N. J., Aug. 25th, 1858.

MR. EDITOR:—Beginning where my last letter left off, I now resume my correspondence with your paper. In pursuing this subject, however, it is not my design to enter largely into details at present, but speak in a somewhat general manner, reserving honorable exceptions for the future, as occasion may demand. The Ecclesiastical Bodies in New Jersey, being a part of the American Church, and partaking of all its blood-guilty characteristics, it is unnecessary to give them a separate notice of any great extent. A zig-zag, time-serving faith, a cringing and fawning servility, a disregard of human rights and a general compliance with the demands of slavery, regardless of the requirements of God's word, are its prominent features. But, in all manifestation, there is perhaps nothing that reveals so clearly the corrupt and malignant spirit with which it is animated, as its unjust, injurious, and insulting treatment of the black man, whom it hunts from the cradle to the grave, with unrelenting hate and fury. of this degrading, soul-crushing treatment, the colored brother, who has been lured to its bosom by specious promises, receives a Benjamin's portion. If the black man, feeling desirous of seeking his eternal salvation, connects himself with the Church in the prescribed manner, he is kindly furnished with a berth in a despised corner of the sacred edifice, where he is regarded as an inmate of a lazaretto; when, in the progress of the voyage heavenword, the members professedly celebrate the dying love of Christ at the Communion Table, by eating of the bread, that makes them one body, and drinking the wine in token of the one blood shed for all, his spiritual strength is renewed by waiting at a respectful distance until the others have partaken; and finally, when death frees the insulted and wounded soul, sending it beyond the reach of Christian hate, the body of the "brother in Christ" is excluded from the churchyard as if it were the carcass of an unclean beast. These indignities, it may be said, are heaped upon us in proportion to our "religion." The more we have of the

latter, the more we receive of the former—That sympathy with the sorrowful and suffering, which unperverted humanity must feel, and which the Bible enjoins as a Christian duty, is heretical in the eyes of the Church. In consequence, appeals in behalf of the tortured, plundered and bleeding slave, might as well be addressed to the crew of a pirate-ship. So far as the millions of slavery's victims are concerned, it acts out, to the fullest extent, the murderous principle which Cain expressed in the words—"Am I my brother's keeper?"

But though the Church is bitterly hostile to the pure and undefiled religion of Jesus, the pulpit still continues to threaten with all the terrors of hell whoever refused to pass under the yoke of spiritual bondage by submitting to its degrading conditions. And, strange to say, there is yet to be found colored men and friends of the slave, who adhere with considerable tenacity to the delusive idea that it is a duty, though a disagreeable one, to unite with and thus become part of such a body. The result naturally is a superabundance of what if the expression is allowable, may be described by the term, apathy of absurdity! Why is it, that anti-slavery men still persist in countenancing in any degree a pro-slavery Church, with its pro-slavery offspring, the American Tract Society and similar bodies? If in China it would be a Christian duty to become a regular visitor to the temple if Confucius, and to conform to all the rites there observed; in Turkey to go through the usual ceremonies in a Mahomedan mosque; in Thibet, to bow in adoration before the Grand Lama; and if in India it would be our duty to worship Brama, or cast ourselves before the blood-besmeared car of Juggernaut, then, in the United States, Christianity may require us to devote our brethren to the infernal gods of slavery, and sacrifice our humanity upon the altars of a pro-slavery Church. Otherwise not. More soon.

Yours, respectfully,

A. P. S.