The Two Slaves Were As Frightened As People Almost Stupified By Sickness
Could Be; But When I Asked One Of The Freed Negresses If She Were Alarmed,
She Said, "Me No Fear; If Me Die, Me Go To Jesus Christ; If Me Live, Me
Serve Him Here - Better To Die!"
It has been said that "poverty, sickness, all the ills of life, are
Paradise to what we fear of death" - that "it is not that life is sweet,
but that death is bitter." Here the poet and the philosopher might have
learned a lesson.
This poor, untutored negress probably knew nothing more
"than her Bible true;" but she had that knowledge of a future state which
reason, unassisted by the light of revelation, could never have learned;
she knew yet more - she knew God as revealed in Christ, and in that
knowledge, under its highest and truest name of Faith, she feared not
the summons which would call her into the presence of the Judge of all.
The infidel may hug his heartless creed, which, by ignoring alike futurity
and the Divine government, makes an aimless chaos of the past, and a
gloomy obscurity of the future; but, in the "hour of death and in the day
of judgment," the boldest atheist in existence would thankfully exchange
his failing theories for the poor African's simple creed.
Providence, which has not endowed the negro with intellectual powers of
the highest order, has given him an amount of heart and enthusiasm to
which we are strangers.
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