"
Against this iniquitous resolution the official members of two of the
coloured Methodist Episcopal Churches in Baltimore immediately
remonstrated and petitioned. The following powerful and pathetic
passages are from their address:--
"The adoption of such a resolution by our highest ecclesiastical
judicatory,--a judicatory composed of the most experienced and the
wisest brethren in the Church, the choice selection of twenty-eight
Annual Conferences,--has inflicted, we fear, an irreparable injury upon
eighty thousand souls for whom Christ died,--souls who, by this act of
your body, have been stripped of the dignity of Christians, degraded in
the scale of humanity, and treated as criminals, for no other reason
than the colour of their skin! Your resolution has, in our humble
opinion, _virtually_ declared that a mere physical peculiarity, the
handiwork of our all-wise and benevolent Creator, is _prima facie_
evidence of incompetency to tell the truth, or is an unerring
indication of unworthiness to bear testimony against a fellow-being
whose skin is denominated white. * * *
"Brethren, out of the abundance of the heart we have spoken.
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