This would be doing some good with money that is now only used
to disturb the Indians, to take from them their Meeting-house, to
create divisions among them, and turn what the pious Williams meant
for a blessing into a curse to the Indians. What would the pious
Williams say to Harvard College, could he visit Marshpee on a Sabbath?
He might go to the Meeting-House built for the Indians, by the society
in England, of which I believe he was a principal member. He would
find a while man in the pulpit, white singers loading the worship, and
the body of the church occupied by seventy or a hundred white persons,
of the neighboring villages, scarcely one of whom lives on the
plantation. Among these he would see four, five, six, or possibly ten
persons with colored skins; not but one male among them, belonging to
the church. He would probably think he had made a mistake, and that
he was in a white town, and not among the Indians. He might then go to
the house of blind Joseph, (the colored Baptist preacher,) or to the
School-house in Marshpee, and he would there find twenty, thirty, or
forty Indians, all engaged in the solemn worship of God, united and
happy, with a little church, growing in grace. He might then visit the
other School-house, at the neck, where he would find William Apes,
an Indian, preaching to fifty, sixty, or seventy, and sometimes an
hundred Indians, all uniting in fervent devotion. After the sermon, he
would hear a word of exhortation from several of the colored brethren
and sisters, in their broken way, but which often touches the heart
of the Indian, more than all the learning that Harvard College can
bestow.
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