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82 THE CRISIS

"And in a manger," continued the Jew.

"This is, indeed, a manger," laughed the woman, "but He is not here- He is not here--only--cattle feed here."

Then the silk-robed priest on the left interrupted:

"You do not understand," he said, "it is not a child of the body we seek, but of the Word. The Word which was with God and the Word which was God. We seek the illuminating truth which shall settle all our wild groupings and bring light to this blind world." But the woman laughed even more bitterly.

"I was foolish enough once to think," she said, "that out of my brain would leap some wondrous illuminating word which should give light and warmth to the world, but nothing has been born, save here and there an epigram and the smartness of a phrase. No, He is not here."

The surpliced priest drew back with disappointed mien, and then suddenly, in the face of priest and Jew, as they turned toward the unseen figure at her back, she saw the birth of new and wonderful comprehension-- Jew and Gentile sank to their knees-- and she heard a soft and mighty voice that came up out of the shadows behind her as she bent forward, almost crouching, and it said:

"Him whom we seek is a child neither of thy body nor of thy brain, but of thy heart. Strong son of God, immortal love. We seek not the king of the world nor the light of the world, but the love of the world, and of all men, for all men; and lo! this thou bearest beneath thy heart, O woman of mankind. This night it shall be born!"

Slowly her heart rose and surged within her as she struggled to her feet; a wonderful revelation lighted in her whirling brain. She, of all women; she, the chosen one-- the bride of Almighty God; her lips babbled noiselessly searching for that old and saintly hymn: "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his hand-maiden, for behold! from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." A great new strength gripped her limbs. Slowly she arose, and as she rose, the roof rose silently with her-- the walls of the vast room widened-- the cold wet pavement touched her satined feet, and the pale-blue brilliance of the star rained on her coiled hair and naked shoulders. The shouting, careless, noisy midnight crowds surged by and brushed her gown. Slowly she turned herself, with strange new gladness in her heart, and the last words of the hymn on her lips: "He hath put down in the Mighty from their seats and hath exalted them of low degree; he hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away." She turned, and lo! before her stood that third figure, an old, bent black man, sad faced and pitiful, and yet with brilliant caverned eyes and mighty wings that curved to Heaven. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
"Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace, good will toward men."
                           SELAH!

EDITORIAL 83
FROM A LAYMAN.
SIR: I am looking forward to some comment by you in the next number of THE CRISIS in re the Episcopal Church convention in its dealings toward the Negro. Were it not too well known that that church was the bulwark of slavery, and always has been the mainstay of prejudice, it might have been amazing to behold the hypocrisy and bigotry displayed by these "ministers of the Gospel." Evidently the Southern bishops could not divorce from their minds the Southern maxim: "Keep the Nigger down."
   Yours truly,
   E. L. CROSS.
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
IN the red blood-guiltiness of the Christian church in America toward black folk the Episcopal Church has undoubtedly larger share than any other group. It was the Episcopal Church that for 250 years made itself the center and bulwark of man stealing and chattel slavery. It was the Episcopal Church that deliberately closed its doors in the face of the praying slave; it was the Episcopal Church that refused after the war to educate the freedmen, and it is still refusing, and it is only on the rostrum of the Episcopal Church that such reactionary heathenism could find welcome expression as was uttered by the bishops of Georgia and Tennessee at the last general convention.
The setting was characteristic. In the Cathedral of St. John and the Divine were gathered 1,000 persons, three-fourths of whom represented the emancipated and risen race whom the church for two centuries had insulted and spit upon. They were quiet, well bred and earnest people, long suffering and self-sacrificing. They did not complain when the obsequious ushers pushed them to the rear and carried forward the snobs and pretenders - the smug-faced hypocrites who are making the Episcopal Church in America a hissing in the ears of righteous men.
The dark hundreds sat down quietly and listened to - what? To a political screed, to lies that sounded deliberate, and to a wretched carping bitterness which disgraced the anointed prelates who thus fumed and cursed God and insulted their helpless auditors.
It is NOT true that the Fifteenth Amendment is the cause of the problems from the presence of the Negro race in America, and no student of American history with an ounce of sense or honesty would affirm this. As a matter of fact it was only the ballot of reconstruction times that kept the freedmen from re-enslavement.
There is not the slightest evidence that the South has spent $165,000,000 for Negro education, and yet this venerable lie, started in the senility of the late Commissioner Harris, was paraded again to salve the conscience of the guilty South.
The Atlanta University conference did NOT affirm the unmorality of most Negro preachers. It affirmed just the opposite, and the bishop of Tennessee made statements which sounded like deliberate falsification of the facts when he twisted a partial quotation of its context to serve his own ends.
The American Negro does NOT stand in unusual need of moral training. It is the American while man who needs that. The American white man, and especially the white man of the South, is a thief and a libertine to a greater extent than the Negro ever was or ever will be, and it is an impudent thing to preach regeneration to the helpless victims of slavery and lust and stealing.
Why should the Episcopal Church in the day of its dotage thus elaborately set the stage to advertise Southern re-