Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [43]
Those words were chilling enough, especially when I guiltily recalled how preoccupied I’d become with my clothes and my appearance. But when the pastor gripped the pulpit and fixed us with his impassioned gaze, his next words were met with pin-drop silence. “I’m speaking about the issue of slavery. You are either in favor of its continuance in these United States of America, or you will fight against it with all your heart and mind and strength until it is abolished. There can be no middle ground, no neutral territory between what’s right and what’s wrong, just as there is no compromise between light and darkness. What motivates you?” he concluded. “It’s time to examine your heart. And then let’s be about our heavenly Father’s business.”
My aunt and uncle didn’t linger to socialize after the service— few people did. That’s how shaken we all felt.
“Well! That young man certainly won’t last long with our congregation,” Aunt Martha declared at the dinner table. “Imagine! Trying to tell us how to live! That’s not what church is for. Rosalie, pass the potatoes, please.”
“What is church for, dear?” Uncle Philip asked quietly.
“Why . . . why, it’s so that we will all feel uplifted, of course. It’s to remind us that God is love.”
“It seems to me that’s precisely what that young man tried to do today—to remind us that God loves the Negro race as much as He loves ours.”
Aunt Martha pushed her chair back, as if she was about to stand. “Don’t start with me, Philip. You know I dislike slavery as much as you do. I gladly left it all behind when I moved up here.”
“Out of sight, out of mind,” I heard Uncle Philip murmur.
I stared down at my plate of roast beef in shame. I’d managed to push all the injustices I’d witnessed from my mind, too, but they hadn’t gone away. I felt as though God was shining His light in my heart, just as Rev. Greene had warned, and I hated what I saw: cowardice.
“What we do outside of church is none of that young man’s business,” Aunt Martha concluded.
Uncle Philip gaped at her, his dinner roll halfway to his mouth. He seemed too stunned to speak.
“Mama,” Julia asked suddenly, “may I invite Rev. Greene to afternoon tea on Thursday?” Julia’s face wore the dreamy look she always got when she fell in love with a new beau. I guessed that she had now fallen for the young reverend. Had she even heard a word of her parents’ conversation? Or Rev. Greene’s stirring sermon? “
I think that would be a fine idea, Julia,” Uncle Philip said before my aunt could reply. “I understand that Rev. Greene is originally from New York State. He probably doesn’t know a soul here in Philadelphia.”
Nathaniel Greene was the sole topic of Julia’s conversation for the next four days. He had accepted her invitation to tea, creating the serious crisis of what she should wear for the occasion. I looked for a way to be excused from the event, terrified that he would see the darkness that was in my heart the moment he set eyes on me. But of course I was expected to attend—to keep Julia from going into a swoon if for no other reason.
“What’ll I talk about? What’ll I say? What if my mind goes blank?” she worried. She needn’t have. Rev. Greene descended from a long line of ministers and was well-practiced in the graceful art of taking afternoon tea with parishioners. He also had a subject that he never grew tired of discussing—abolition. It didn’t take Julia long to realize that if she kept to that topic, she would have his full attention.
“I simply can’t understand how people can own someone,” she said, pouring him a third cup of tea. Then she made her first mistake. “My cousin Caroline is from Virginia,” she said. “Her family owns slaves.”
“Really?” He turned his attention to me as if I was a fascinating new species from an exotic culture. With his smooth-cheeked, boyish face and reddish-blond hair, he looked much younger than twenty-five. He would have made a more convincing schoolboy in overalls, playing hooky from school, than a minister in a dark suit and