Levi Jenkins Coppin (1848-1923), an A. M. E. Bishop, missionary to South Africa, and editor of the A. M. E.’s Church Review, was proud of his library and especially what he called its “Black Boys” section. In his autobiography, he called special attention to a work on this stretch of shelf that hadn’t received its due, to his mind, “an old and rare volume” from 1867 with an epic title: The Rise and Progress of the Kingdoms of Light and Darkness (Coppin 263-64). The book, modeled after Paradise Lost and Pilgrim’s Progress, retold all of human history as an ancient war between King “Alpha” and “Abadon,” God and Satan, a conflict that had erupted anew most recently in the American Civil War and the battle against race prejudice in Reconstruction. Little is known of its author, Lorenzo Dow Blackson, beyond what he himself recorded in the book. Perhaps taking after Frederick Douglass, Blackson first greets readers with an engraved portrait of himself sporting a neat suit and graying goatee, his lips pursed and brow raised as if surprised by the vision he is about to relate. Named after the Methodist preacher, Blackson writes that he was born in Delaware in 1817 to formerly enslaved parents and raised in the Methodist Episcopal church, but was now a member of Peter Spencer’s African Union Church after growing disillusioned with racism in the former. He apologizes for his brief schooling, which ended prematurely as a result of discrimination at the hands of white students. Most importantly, Blackson recounts his conversion experience after hearing an itinerant Methodist preacher as a teenager, agonizing enough to rival any Puritan as it heaved him between moments of rapture and spells that left him “heavy and cold,” sometimes eager for death. He found peace only when he promised to heed God’s command to “go out and warn sinners” (Blackson 7-9). Light and Darkness is his attempt to do so, a Herculean effort to accomplish for Reconstruction America what Milton and Bunyan had done in Restoration England. “I also was once a rebel against King Alpha, and in the vile service of Abadon,” Blackson writes. After being wounded by a “Gospel bow,” though, he enlists in the Army of Light and records its history until its most recent battles in America. Rather than regurgitating Bunyan, the book offers a visionary mix of universal history, doctrinaire Protestantism, and postbellum black social critique. As a proud member of “the Protestant Corps,” Alpha’s true army and the mortal enemy of the “Roman Division,” Blackson relates its five “grand divisions” stationed in Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and “Oceanica . . . all the islands of the sea.” If he is antiCatholic, Blackson also protests the racism within his own Corps. “Even in the Army of Light, the place where it should never be found,” he writes, generals and cadets alike draw “a line of demarkation between their colored and white fellow soldiers” (159). Blackson combats this prejudice with a blend of Ethiopianist and Christian arguments, declaring that Africans were the “first most powerful and enlightened people on earth,” but later fell from this glory into “great darkness and ignorance” because they rejected King Alpha, “a warning to other divisions, lest they too should . . . fall into the same or a worse position” (128). In fact, the most recent battle in Alpha and Abadon’s ancient struggle, the American Civil War, was the

中文翻译：

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洛伦佐·道·布莱克森的《光明与黑暗王国的崛起与进步》

Levi Jenkins Coppin (1848-1923) 是 AME 主教、南非传教士和 AME 教会评论的编辑，为他的图书馆感到自豪，尤其是他称之为“黑人男孩”的部分。在他的自传中，他特别关注这幅架子上的一件作品，在他看来，这是一本 1867 年的“古老而稀有的书”，有一个史诗般的标题：王国的崛起和进步。光明与黑暗（Coppin 263-64）。这本书以《失乐园》和《朝圣者的进步》为蓝本，将人类历史重述为国王“阿尔法”与“亚巴顿”、上帝与撒旦之间的古老战争，这场冲突最近在美国内战和战争中再次爆发反对重建中的种族偏见。除了他自己在书中记录的内容之外，人们对它的作者洛伦佐·道·布莱克森知之甚少。也许是在模仿弗雷德里克·道格拉斯 (Frederick Douglass) 之后，布莱克森首先向读者展示了一幅刻有他本人穿着整洁西装、留着灰色山羊胡的画像，他的嘴唇抿起，眉毛扬起，仿佛对他即将讲述的愿景感到惊讶。布莱克森以卫理公会传教士的名字命名，他写道，他于 1817 年出生在特拉华州，父母是以前被奴役的父母，在卫理公会主教教堂长大，但在对前者的种族主义失望后，现在成为彼得斯宾塞非洲联盟教会的成员。他为自己短暂的学业道歉，由于白人学生的歧视而过早结束了学业。最重要的是，布莱克森讲述了他在十几岁时听到巡回卫理公会传教士的转变经历后，痛苦到足以与任何清教徒相媲美，因为它在狂喜和咒语之间摇晃着他，使他“沉重而寒冷”，有时渴望死亡。只有当他答应听从上帝的命令“出去警告罪人”（布莱克森 7-9）时，他才找到了平安。《光明与黑暗》是他的尝试，是为重建美国完成弥尔顿和班扬在恢复英格兰所做的努力。“我也曾经是一个反对国王 Alpha 的叛徒，并为 Abadon 服务，”布莱克森写道。然而，在被“福音之弓”打伤后，他加入了光之军，并记录了它的历史，直到最近一次在美国的战斗。这本书没有反刍班扬，而是提供了普世历史、教条新教和战后黑人社会批判的有远见的组合。作为“新教军团”的骄傲成员，”阿尔法的真正军队和“罗马师”的死敌，布莱克森讲述了其驻扎在亚洲、非洲、欧洲、美洲和“大洋洲”的五个“大师”。. . 海上的所有岛屿。” 如果他是反天主教徒，布莱克森也会抗议他自己的军团内的种族主义。他写道：“即使在光明之军这个永远不应该被发现的地方，”将军和学员们都在“他们的有色人种和白人士兵之间划出一条分界线”（159）。布莱克森混合了埃塞俄比亚和基督教的论点来对抗这种偏见，宣称非洲人是“地球上最强大和最开明的人”，但后来从这种荣耀中堕入“巨大的黑暗和无知”，因为他们拒绝了阿尔法王，“警告其他部门，以免他们也应该这样做。. . 陷入相同或更糟的境地”（128）。