Various

“ Illiteracy, ignorance, in a republic is, and must always be, assailing and undermining its very foundations. It is the natural and deadly foe of free government. No republic can live, no republic ought to live, in which the voters are ignorant. Voting in a republic is governing; and no man has any right to govern me who does not know enough to govern himself. No man has any right to take part in the government of the nation, who has not some notion of what right government is. ”

“ We educate, also, because we love our country, and because we believe that there is no other remedy for evils that now threaten her very existence, but the remedy of Christian education. Thus we are brought face to face with the problem of illiteracy. Illiteracy in a republic; what does it signify? It is the creeping paralysis that unnerves its arm; it is the malaria that poisons its blood; it is the cataract that dims and finally destroys its vision; it is the slow decay that consumes its life. ”

“ It is not number but might that tells in the formation processes of a people. A single church of genuine substance, rightly constituted and ordered and working outward, is a germ around which a whole community will take form. More than numbers, the inherent vitality of this molds and fashions after the ideas and principles with which it is charged. It has vitalizing and organic power in it, and kindling the intelligence and awakening the responsibility of its own members, it leads and sways the people around it. ”

“ We come back, now, from our brief excursion into this fruitful and fascinating realm of percentages, to confront again that large mass of illiteracy that lies athwart the path of this nation. Huge it is, but, thank God, it looks not so vast and unmanageable as once it seemed. It is growing; but the nation is growing faster; relatively it is decreasing. It is far too formidable yet to be let alone; so long as ignorance rules almost one-third of our rulers in all of these sixteen States, no man has any right to relax his vigilance or abate his energies. ”

“ A revived church will become a giving church, and a giving church is the fore-herald of a converted world.
How much owest thou thy Lord? That is the question which the giver has to face. Sometimes in commercial circles a man will assign a debt that is owing him to some one else, out of friendship, that he may take it when he has collected it and use it for himself. Much in the same way, I think, the Lord Jesus has assigned a large portion of the debt which we owe to him to those who are around us—to the unconverted at our doors, to those races among whom you labor, to the pagans far away. ”

“ I am happy to say that the two societies are equally committed against caste, and will equally and honorably repudiate all intentional sanction of it. But the bare fact that one is avowedly working mainly for the whites and the other mainly for the blacks, will, in spite of all protests to the contrary, array them before the public as separated only by the color line. It is not proper for me to speak for another society, but for my own I must speak. The American Missionary Association was born an opponent of slavery. ”

“ We educate, because a genuine Christianity always educates; because the work of the pulpit, the work of the Church everywhere must always be, in considerable part, the work of education; but, more especially, we of this Association educate, because the peoples with whom we work are in peculiar need of education; and because nothing but intelligence will ever break the fetters of degrading superstition by which they are held, and lead them forth into the liberty of the sons of God. ”

“ Started with no expectation of founding churches, it yet has nothing in its constitution limiting it to one kind of effort nor to any one class or race. Its schools are open to all. Its churches are simply Christian churches. It goes to teach and preach and to elevate the masses. That is what is needed—no distinction of caste or class, and in the organization of churches the recognition of a regenerate membership on the principle that mankind are of one blood and on the fellowship of all Christians. ”

“ It is the educational work that is now before us.
We educate, because education is the servant of a pure religion. We educate, because we are the missionaries of a faith which always adds to itself virtue, and to its virtue knowledge. ”

“ Once more spiritual life is the only complete bond of union. Says President Hopkins, “It is on this that the whole method of God in the restoration of man is based, and it is for the recognition of this by men, and their adoption of God’s method of vitality and unity, the tardy, laboring and discordant times wait. No partial reform will do; no coming man. Everywhere men are divergent, repellant. The bond of common humanity is but a string of tow to bind the Samson of human selfishness and passions. There must be a divine life, a divine centre. ”

“ The bringing of such a motive to bear on so simple a thing as the making of a contribution for the poor saints of Jerusalem seems like cracking a nut with a Nasmyth steam hammer. But Paul knew what he was doing when he dictated these words. He wanted to exalt and consecrate all Christian beneficence by having it done from the most powerful Christian motive. And after the presentation of such a motive there is no more to be said. For when men know the grace of Christ, they will never feel that they have given Him enough, and till they know it they will never give Him anything. ”

“ Caste is a worse sin in America than in India. In practicing it the Hindoo obeys his gods and his veda; the American dishonors his God and disobeys his Bible. The Hindoo is a heathen and is degraded by caste; the American sends missionaries to convert him and to denounce his caste, and yet sustains caste at home. The Hindoo is consistent in denying equal rights to all men; the American boasts that God made of one blood all nations, and that all men are free and equal, and yet tolerates caste.
In sustaining caste the American perpetuates the inconsistency and shame of slavery. ”

“ God’s secret is with them that fear Him. The men who, for Christ’s sake, said, “We cannot set apart to God that which has come from unpaid human labor; we cannot thus have fellowship with the works of darkness;” these men God has put into the fore-front of the great battle with ignorance and degradation—the great battle in which the South begins to ask the Nation which cannot protect the black man to come to her assistance, crying out, like Caesar to Cassius, “Help, Cassius, or we sink!” They got their baptism at the foot of the Cross. Look at the queenly institutions which they have planted. ”

“ Thus slavery rejected not simply this broken mountainous country, but the large class of whites which inhabited this region. If the North cares to dignify physical labor in the South, if it feels the need of a class that has a natural love for free, republican institutions, if [392] it cares to have the common-school system take rooting in the soil, if it desires a class of whites that shall be the wise, consistent friends of the colored people, perhaps it may find that this large body of whites rejected by slavery will prove the effective agency under the divine planning for this purpose. ”

“ There has scarcely been a foreign missionary field in the world which has had more perils, which has demanded greater sacrifices, which has developed spirits more heroic, more Christ-like. The same spirit which led our brave boys in blue to die to make men free, led their sisters to die to make them holy. And what do you see to-day? This society has done more to stay the tide of illiteracy, to lay the foundations of permanent civil and religious prosperity than all the other agencies put together. ”

“ Thus, not on the farther side of broad oceans, or even the distant borders of our land, but right at hand in the very heart of the best settled and most cultured part of our country lies this territory, vast in extent, utterly neglected by all uplifting agencies in the past, peculiarly susceptible to the awakening influences of the changed social conditions at the South, where there is an ignorance so dense that when we remember that they are our brothers and sisters, not by Christian ties simply but by direct blood and lineage, we must hang our heads in shame. ”

“ Never before, perhaps, in the history of the world, have two decades brought about such a manifest change in a race. Religion, religionism, forms the staple of his speech by day, and the stuff that his dreams are made of by night. ”

“ No better work and none looking more to permanent results has been done. Many a missionary and pastor has found his work at once enlarged and all his means of good multiplied, when the house of God has been given him by its aid. And every such edifice stands forth as an eloquent witness of your loving care for the people of the South, and serves as a bond of union between the distant parts of our land. ”

“ And it seems to me that we want to educate the public sentiment and it is evident that the solution of this great vexing problem can only come through the gradual and thorough development of the negro’s mental and moral nature. I say thorough, because some men think that the negro need have only an elementary training, that he is not prepared for a higher training. Why is he not? If it has taken centuries of culture, with the best masters and the best teachers, to uplift the white race, why is it not necessary to uplift the black race? ”

“ Why is it that religion is compelled to shield some of the greatest wrongs on earth? Albert Barnes said, long before slavery was abolished: “There is no power out of the Church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.” Must sinful and harmful caste, the baleful progeny of slavery, find its bulwark in the Church—nay, in some of the colored churches themselves? ”

“ For that day, when it comes, is the morning, so to speak, of the new creation. That tide-wave in the money power can as little be resisted when God brings it on as the tides of the sea; and like these also it will flow across the world in a day. ”

“ When we remember that the oldest of these institutions has seen but a quarter of a century, and practically but twenty years of life time, and that now we rejoice in eight chartered institutions, comparatively strong and effective, twelve high and normal schools and forty-two common schools, with 279 teachers doing their soul-expanding work, we may well say “What hath God wrought.” Far as it falls short of our desire and our duty, so far and more also does it exceed the boldest reasonable expectations of the dark and cloudy time of the beginning. ”

“ It is idle for us to suppose that the social growth of generations enforced by ignorance, savage heredity and marked physical characteristics, has wasted away in less than a score of years. More vital than any political problem or the growth of any special church polity is the question whether the time can ever come in this country when the negro in debating his chances and opportunities in life shall not be made to feel that his color is a drawback to him. ”

“ There are two schemes of the universe: one, the Christian scheme, with a belief in the living God as the original of all things—a personal being who is personally interested in his creatures, and who is desiring, since he has made him in his own image, to have man hold communion with himself, and who desires to have all men reconciled to himself from their sin and their misery and their unhappy life. There is another scheme where there is no God, or, what is the same thing to us, we do not know whether there is or not. ”

“ To such a waiting ear—and, brethren, it is waiting—come through the missionary press the tidings of opportunity, the sound of doors, long closed, creaking on their hinges as they fling open for the feet of the delaying messengers of grace. ”

“ The work already done is a fair movement to self-forgetful charity. We should now make our beneficence more and more the channel of grace and fellowship to brethren whom we have made brethren. If we do indeed hold this church polity on such terms of intelligence as to make it fit to hold it at all, if it be no fault of the awakened ones at the South that they hold it, then what has been so good and fruitful here we should make strong and fruitful there. And if this Association has come in its legitimate growth to the establishment of self-governed churches, accept them as our own. ”

“ The negro’s highest powers and worthiest capabilities are not all shown in the development of sterile marshes or barren highlands. If slavery brought out his power of endurance, his patience and his unparalleled fidelity, freedom called forth his intellectual ability and causes the world to wonder at his rapid attainments. ”

“ You may take Yale College as it stands, with all its culture, and you may turn out all our hundreds of young men down into the South this blessed night; what could they do in missionary work to-morrow morning? So you see that it is not the money, or the men, or the culture that alone is needed; something more is needed, and that is “spiritual vitality.” ”

“ Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said “It is more blessed,” that is, it is a greater happiness “to give than to receive.” In many enterprises in which men engage the cost is more than the profit, “the play” as the French proverb has it, “is not worth the candle,” but here there is always blessing; blessing in the consciousness that we have the means of doing good; blessing in entering into fellowship with God, whose happiness is all that of giving out; and blessing in the fact that the joy of the recipient comes back to us and redoubles our delight. ”

“ He that put money into the contribution box for him, or sent some one else to help him to the hospital? No; only the man that set him upon his own beast, carried him to an inn, and took care of him. A man cannot live a neighbor to man if he is not living a neighbor to God, as he is in Christ Jesus.
Before the war, there was organized a benevolent society, whose anniversary occurs the present week—a society to preach the Gospel among the heathen. Its founders said, “We cannot take money that has been coined from slave labor. It is the price of innocent blood. It cries up to God for vengeance.” ”

“ I might answer by pointing to distinguished colored men who fill positions of responsibility and emolument in this country. But not only are there men who are educated among us, but there are also schools of high grade whose portals are anxiously crowded by young men and women thirsting for knowledge. I have taken one State as an example of our material progress; let another show our intellectual advancement. In 1861 there was not a school in North Carolina to which persons of color were admitted. ”