SPIRITUAL AMNESIA
64-0411
E-22
One time in the south, I read a story from down here where they--when
they used to have slaves. They'd take those people and sell them on the market,
just like you would a used car. And then, there was a buyer--broker who would
come by and pick up these slaves, and trade them and just like you would a car,
or something. And those slaves was away from their home country. They were from
Africa. The Boers kidnapped them, brought them over here to the islands, and
then smuggled them into the United States and sold them for slaves, from out in
Jamaica and around. Now, we find that
those people were sad. They'd been kidnapped from their own home. They'd been taken
out by an enemy, and they were sad. They'd never see their husband no more,
their wife no more, their father, mother, their children. They were absolutely.
They had to whip them with whips to make them work, for they was sad people.
E-23
And one day a broker came by a certain plantation; and he saw a bunch of
slaves out there working. And he went in and asked the owner, he said,
"How many slaves you got?" Said, "About a hundred." Said,
"You got any you'd swap or sell?" He said, "Yep." Said,
"Let me look them over." And he went out in the field and watched
them. And he seen them have to whip them around. And after while he saw one
young man they didn't have to whip. He had his chest out and his chin up:
didn't have to whip him. So the broker said, "I'd like to buy that
slave." And he said, "But he's not for sale." He said,
"Well, what's the difference with that slave?" Said, "Is that
slave the boss over the rest of them?" He said, "No, he's just a slave."
He said, "Well, maybe you feed him different?" He said, "No, he
eats in the galley with the rest of the slaves." He said, "Well, what
makes him so different from the rest of the slaves?" He said, "Well,
this I wondered too for a long time. But one day I learned that over in the
homeland where he come from, his father is the king of the whole tribe. And
though he be an alien, and away from home, yet he knows he's the son of a king,
and he--he conducts himself like the son of a king."
E-24
I thought, "But that... If a Negro coming from Africa and knowed
that his father was a tribesman, and a king over a tribe, what ought it to do
to a Christian that's borned again, a man or woman that our Father is the King
of heaven in glory?" We should conduct ourselves as Christian men and
women. We should act like it, dress like it, talk like it, live like it. Though
we be an alien, yet we are children of the King.