upted the long prayer with a loud Amen! And so most striking
to me, as I approached the village and the little plain church perched
aloft, was the air of intense excitement that possessed that mass of
black folk. A sort of suppressed terror hung in the air and seemed to
seize us,--a pythian madness, a demoniac possession, that lent terrible
reality to song and word. The black and massive form of the preacher
swayed and quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us in
singular eloquence. The people moaned and fluttered, and then the
gaunt-cheeked brown woman beside me suddenly leaped straight into the
air and shrieked like a lost soul, while round about came wail and
groan and outcry, and a scene of human passion such as I had never
conceived before.

Those who have not thus witnessed the frenzy of a Negro revival in the
untouched backwoods of the South can but dimly realize the religious
feeling of the slave; as described, such scenes appear grotesque and
funny, but as seen they are awful. Three things characterized this
religion of the slave,--the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy. The
Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on
American soil. A leader, a politician, an orator, a "boss," an
intriguer, an idealist,--all these he is, and ever, too, the centre of
a group of men, now twenty, now a thousand in number. The combination
of a certain adroitness with deep-seated earnestness, of tact with
consummate ability, gave him his preeminence, and helps him maintain
it. The type, of course, varies according to time and place, from the
West Indies in the sixteenth century to New England in the nineteenth,
and from the Mississippi bottoms to cities like New Orleans or New York.

The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its
touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement,
still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life
and longing yet born on American soil. Sprung from the African
forests, where its counterpart can still be heard, it was adapted,
changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until,
under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of
a people's sorrow, despair, and hope.

Finally the Frenzy of "Shouting," when the Spirit of the Lord passed
by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy, was
the last essential of Negro religion and the one more