University of Virginia Library

LETTER XI.

A friend passing by the Methodist church in Elizabeth
street, heard such loud and earnest noises issuing therefrom,
that he stepped in to ascertain the cause. A coloured
woman was preaching to a full audience, and in a manner
so remarkable that his attention was at once rivetted. The
account he gave excited my curiosity, and I sought an interview
with the woman, whom I ascertained to be Julia
Pell, of Philadelphia. I learned from her that her father
was one of the innumerable tribe of fugitives from slavery,
assisted by that indefatigable friend of the oppressed, Isaac
T. Hopper. This was quite a pleasant surprise to the benevolent
old gentleman, for he was not aware that any of
Zeek's descendants were living; and it was highly interesting
to him to find one of them in the person of this female
Whitfield. Julia never knew her father by the name
of Zeek; for that was his appellation in slavery, and she
had known him only as a freeman. Zeek, it seems, had
been “sold running,” as the term is; that is, a purchaser
had given a very small part of his original value, taking
the risk of not catching him. In Philadelphia, a coloured
man, named Samuel Johnson, heard a gentleman making
inquiries concerning a slave called Zeek, whom he had
“bought running.” “I know him very well,” said Samuel;
“as well as I do myself; he's a good-for-nothing chap;
and you'll be better without him than with him.” “Do
you think so?” “Yes, if you gave what you say for him;
it was a bite—that's all. He's a lazy, good-for-nothing
dog; and you'd better sell your right in him the first chance
you get.” After some further talk, Samuel acknowledged

that Zeek was his brother. The gentleman advised him
to buy him; but Samuel protested that he was such a lazy,
vicious dog, that he wanted nothing to do with him. The
gentleman began to have so bad an opinion of his bargain,
that he offered to sell the fugitive for sixty dollars. Samuel,
with great apparent indifference, accepted the terms,
and the necessary papers were drawn. Isaac T. Hopper
was in the room during the whole transaction; and the
coloured man requested him to examine the papers to see
that all was right. Being assured that everything was in
due form, he inquired, “And is Zeek now free?” “Yes,
entirely free.” “Suppose I was Zeek, and that was the
man that bought me; couldn't he take me?” “Not any
more than he could take me,” said Isaac. As soon as
Samuel received this assurance, he made a low bow to
the gentleman, and, with additional fun in a face always
roguish, said, “Your servant, sir; I am Zeek!” The
roguishness characteristic of her father is reflected in some
degree in Julia's intelligent face; but imagination, uncultivated,
yet highly poetic, is her leading characteristic.

Some have the idea that our destiny is prophesied in
early presentiments; thus, Hannah More, when a little
child, used to play, “go up to London and see the bishops”
—an object for which she afterwards sacrificed a large
portion of her own moral independence and freedom of
thought. In Julia Pell's case, “coming events cast their
shadows before.” I asked her when she thought she first
“experienced religion.” She replied, “When I was a
little girl, father and mother used to go away to meeting on
Sundays, and leave me and my brothers at home all day.
So, I thought I'd hold class-meetings, as the Methodists
did. The children all round in the neighborhood used to
come to hear me preach. The neighbours complained that
we made such a noise, shouting and singing; and every
Monday father gave us a whipping. At last, he said to

mother, `I'm tired of beating these poor children every
week, to satisfy our neighbours. I'll send for my sister to
come, and she will stay at home on Sundays, and keep
them out of mischief.' So my aunt was brought to take
care of us; and the next Sunday, when the children came
thronging to hear me preach, they were greatly disappointed
indeed to hear me say, in a mournful way, `We can't
have any more meetings now; because aunt's come, and
she wont let us.' When my aunt heard this, she seemed
to pity me and the children; and she said if we would get
through before the folks came home, we might hold a meeting;
for she should like to see for herself what it was we
did, that made such a fuss among the neighbours. Then we
had a grand meeting. My aunt's heart was taken hold of
that very day; and when we all began to sing, `Come to
the Saviour, poor sinner, come!' she cried, and I cried;
and when we had done crying, the whole of us broke out
singing `Come to the Saviour.' That very instant I felt
my heart leap up, as if a great load had been taken right
off of it! That was the beginning of my getting religion;
and for many years after that, I saw all the time a blue
smoke rising before my eyes—the whole time a blue smoke,
rising, rising.” As she spoke, she imitated the ascent of
smoke, by a graceful, undulating motion of her hand.

“What do you suppose was the meaning of the blue
smoke?” said I.

“I don't know, indeed, ma'am; but I always supposed
it was my sins rising before me, from the bottomless pit.”

She told me that when her mother died, some years after,
she called her to her bed-side, and said, “Julia, the work
of grace is only begun in you. You haven't got religion
yet. When you can freely forgive all your enemies, and
love to do them good, then you may know that the true
work is completed within you.” I thought the wisest
schools of theology could not have established a better test.

I asked Julia, if she had ever tried to learn to read. She
replied, “Yes, ma'am, I tried once; because I thought it
would be such a convenience, if I could read the Bible for
myself. I made good progress, and in a short time could
spell B-a-k-e-r, as well as anybody. But it dragged my
mind down. It dragged it down. When I tried to think,
every thing scattered away like smoke, and I could do nothing
but spell. Once I got up in an evening meeting to
speak; and when I wanted to say, `Behold the days
come,' I began `B-a—.' I was dreadfully ashamed, and
concluded I'd give up trying to learn to read.”

These, and several other particulars I learned of Julia,
at the house of Isaac T. Hopper. When about to leave us,
she said she felt moved to pray. Accordingly, we all remained
in silence, while she poured forth a brief, but very
impressive prayer for her venerable host; of whom she
spoke as “that good old man, whom thou, O Lord, hast
raised up to do such a blessed work for my down-trodden
people.”

Julia's quiet, dignified, and even lady-like deportment in
the parlour, did not seem at all in keeping with what I had
been told of her in the pulpit, with a voice like a sailor at
mast-head, and muscular action like Garrick in Mad Tom.
On the Sunday following, I went to hear her for myself;
and in good truth, I consider the event as an era in my life
never to be forgotten. Such an odd jumbling together of
all sorts of things in Scripture, such wild fancies, beautiful,
sublime, or grotesque, such vehemence of gesture,
such dramatic attitudes, I never before heard and witnessed.
I verily thought she would have leaped over the pulpit;
and if she had, I was almost prepared to have seen her
poise herself on unseen wings, above the wondering congregation.

I know not whether her dress was of her own choosing;
but it was tastefully appropriate. A black silk grown, with

plain, white cuffs; a white muslin kerchief, folded neatly
over the breast, and crossed by a broad black scarf, like that
which bishops wear over the surplice.

She began with great moderation, gradually rising in her
tones, until she arrived at the shouting pitch, common with
Methodists. This she sustained for an incredible time,
without taking breath, and with a huskiness of effort, that
produced a painful sympathy in my own lungs. Imagine
the following, thus uttered; that is, spoken without punctuation.
“Silence in Heaven! The Lord said to Gabriel,
bid all the angels keep silence. Go up into the third
heavens, and tell the archangels to hush their golden harps.
Let the mountains be filled with silence. Let the sea stop
its roaring, and the earth be still. What's the matter now?
Why, man has sinned, and who shall save him? Let there
be silence, while God makes search for a Messiah. Go
down to the earth; make haste, Gabriel, and inquire if any
there are worthy; and Gabriel returned and said, No, not
one. Go search among the angels, Gabriel, and inquire if
any there are worthy; make haste, Gabriel; and Gabriel
returned and said, No, not one. But don't be discouraged.
Don't be discouraged, fellow sinners. God arose in his
majesty, and he pointed to his own right hand, and said to
Gabriel, Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah; he alone is
worthy. He shall redeem my people.”

You will observe it was purely her own idea, that
silence reigned on earth and in heaven, while search was
made for a Messiah. It was a beautifully poetic conception,
not unworthy of Milton.

Her description of the resurrection and the day of judgment,
must have been terrific to most of her audience, and
was highly exciting even to me, whose religious sympathies
could never be roused by fear. Her figure looked strangely
fantastic, and even supernatural, as she loomed up above
the pulpit, to represent the spirits rising from their graves.

So powerful was her rude eloquence, that it continually impressed
me with grandeur, and once only excited a smile;
that was when she described a saint striving to rise, “buried
perhaps twenty feet deep, with three or four sinners a
top of him.”

This reminded me of a verse in Dr. Nettleton's Village
Hymns:

With a power of imagination singularly strong and vivid,
she described the resurrection of a young girl, who had
died a sinner. Her body came from the grave, and her
soul from the pit, where it had been tormented for many
years. “The guilty spirit came up with the flames all
around it—rolling—rolling—rolling.” She suited the action
to the word, as Siddons herself might have done. Then
she described the body wailing and shrieking, “O Lord!
must I take that ghost again? Must I be tormented with
that burning ghost for ever?”

Luckily for the excited feelings of her audience, she
changed the scene, and brought before us the gospel ship,
laden with saints, and bound for the heavenly shore. The
majestic motion of a vessel on the heaving sea, and the
fluttering of its pennon in the breeze, was imitated with wild
gracefulness by the motion of her hands. “It touched the
strand. Oh! it was a pretty morning! and at the first tap
of Heaven's bell, the angels came crowding round, to bid
them welcome. There you and I shall meet, my beloved
fellow-travellers. Farewell—Farewell—I have it in my
temporal feelings that I shall never set foot in this New-York
again. Farewell on earth, but I shall meet you
there,” pointing reverently upward. “May we all be
aboard that blessed ship.” Shouts throughout the audience,

“We will! We will!” Stirred by such responses,
Julia broke out with redoubled fervour, “Farewell—farewell.
Let the world say what they will of me, I shall
surely meet you in Heaven's broad bay. Hell clutched
me, but it hadn't energy enough to hold me. Farewell on
earth. I shall meet you in the morning.” Again and
again she tossed her arms abroad, and uttered her wild
“farewell;” responded to by the loud farewell of a whole
congregation, like the shouts of an excited populace. Her
last words were the poetic phrase, “I shall meet you in the
morning!”

Her audience were wrought up to the highest pitch of
enthusiasm I ever witnessed. “That's God's truth!”
“Glory!” “Amen!” “Hallelujah!” resounded throughout
the crowded house. Emotion vented itself in murmuring,
stamping, shouting, singing, and wailing. It was like the
uproar of a sea lashed by the winds.

You know that religion has always come to me in stillness;
and that the machinery of theological excitement has
ever been as powerless over my soul, as would be the exorcisms
of a wizard. You are likewise aware of my tendency
to generalize; to look at truth as universal, not merely in
its particular relations; to observe human nature as a whole,
and not in fragments. This propensity, greatly strengthened
by the education of circumstances, has taught me to
look calmly on all forms of religious opinion—not with the
indifference, or the scorn, of unbelief; but with a friendly
wish to discover everywhere the great central ideas common
to all religious souls, though often re-appearing in the
strangest disguises, and lisping or jabbering in the most
untranslatable tones.

Yet combined as my religious character is, of quiet mysticism,
and the coolest rationality, will you believe me, I
could scarcely refrain from shouting Hurra! for that heaven-bound
ship; and the tears rolled down my cheeks, as that

dusky priestess of eloquence reiterated her wild and solemn
farewell.

If she gained such power over my spirit, there is no
cause to marvel at the tremendous excitement throughout
an audience so ignorant, and so keenly susceptible to outward
impressions. I knew not how the high-wrought enthusiasm
would be let down in safety. The shouts died
away, and returned in shrill fragments of echoes, like the
trembling vibrations of a harp, swept with a strong hand, to
the powerful music of a war-song. Had I remembered a
lively Methodist tune, as well as I recollected the words,
I should have broke forth:

The same instinct that guided me, impelled the audience
to seek rest in music, for their panting spirits and quivering
nerves. All joined spontaneously in singing an old familiar
tune, more quiet than the bounding, billowy tones of
my favourite Gospel Ship. Blessings on music! Like a
gurgling brook to feverish lips are sweet sounds to the
heated and weary soul.

Everybody round me could sing; and the tones were soft
and melodious. The gift of song is universal with Africans;
and the fact is a prophetic one. Sculpture blossomed
into its fullest perfection in a Physical Age, on which
dawned the intellectual; Painting blossomed in an Intellectual
Age, warmed by the rising sun of moral sentiment;
and now Music goes forward to its culmination in the coming
Spiritual Age. Now is the time that Ethiopia begins
“to stretch forth her hands.” Her soul, so long silenced,
will yet utter itself in music's highest harmony.

When the audience paused, Mr. Matthews, their pastor,
rose to address them. He is a religious-minded man, to
whose good influence Julia owes, under God, her present
state of mind. She always calls him “father,” and speaks
of him with the most affectionate and grateful reverence.
At one period of her life, it seems that she was led astray
by temptations, which peculiarly infest the path of coloured
women in large cities; but ever since her “conversion to
God,” she has been strictly exemplary in her walk and
conversation. In her own expressive language, “Hell
clutched her, but hadn't energy enough to hold her.” The
missteps of her youth are now eagerly recalled by those
who love to stir polluted waters; and they are brought forward
as reasons why she ought not to be allowed to preach.
I was surprised to learn that to this prejudice was added
another, against women's preaching. This seemed a strange
idea for Methodists, some of whose brightest ornaments
have been women preachers. As far back as Adam Clarke's
time, his objections were met by the answer, “If an Ass
reproved Balaam, and a barn-door fowl reproved Peter,
why shouldn't a woman reprove sin?”

This classification with donkeys and fowls is certainly
not very complimentary. The first comparison I heard
most wittily replied to, by a coloured woman who had once
been a slave. “Maybe a speaking woman is like an Ass,”
said she; “but I can tell you one thing—the Ass saw the
angel, when Balaam didn't.”

Father Matthews, after apologizing for various misquotations
of Scripture, on the ground of Julia's inability to read,
added: “But the Lord has evidently called this woman to
a great work. He has made her mighty to the salvation of
many souls, as a cloud of witnesses can testify. Some
say she ought not to preach, because she is a woman. But
I say, `Let the Lord send by whom he will send.' Let
everybody that has a message, deliver it—whether man or

woman, white or coloured! Some say women mustn't
preach, because they were first in the transgression; but it
seems to me hard that if they helped us into sin, they
shouldn't be suffered to help us out. I say, `Let the Lord
send by whom he will send;' and my pulpit shall be always
open.”

Thus did the good man instil a free principle into those
uneducated minds, like gleams of light through chinks in a
prison-wall. Who can foretell its manifold and ever-increasing
results in the history of that long-crippled race? Verily
great is the Advent of a true Idea, made manifest to men;
and great are the miracles it works—making the blind to
see, and the lame to walk.