The American church is saying with the spirit of the unseeing Peter of old, "Not so Lord, we have never accepted any man who is brown or black or yellow as really our brother, for we are white and Thou hast made us of different clay, of purer blood than all these millions of brown and black and yellow peoples.
This quote illustrates Grimké's condemnation of the church's refusal to accept individuals of different races as equals.
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More from Archibald Henry Grimké
When he had ceased speaking I said to those around me: 'That is a providential man; he is a prophet; he will shake our nation to its center, but he will shake slavery out of it.
He saw that they were not essentially unlike other races--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar about them, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the common property of mankind in similar circumstances.
It is true many a cheek burns with shame in view of our national inconsistency, and many a heart bleeds for the miserable African.
No body of men on the face of the earth deserve their charities, and prayers, and united assistance so much as the slaves of this country; and yet they are almost entirely neglected.