or the past, and for the future. Be looking forward with thankful
hearts to higher attainments than _wielding the razor_ and _cleaning
boots and shoes_. The man whose aspirations are not _above_, and even
_below_ these, is indeed, ignorant and wretched enough. I advance it
therefore to you, not as a _problematical_, but as an unshaken and
forever immoveable _fact_, that your full glory and happiness, as well
as all other colored people under heaven, shall never be fully
consummated, but with the _entire emancipation of your enslaved
brethren all over the world_. You may therefore, go to work and do
what you can to rescue, or join in with tyrants to oppress them and
yourselves, until the Lord shall come upon you all like a thief in the
night. For I believe it is the will of the Lord that our greatest
happiness shall consist in working for the salvation of our whole
body. When this is accomplished a burst of glory will shine upon you,
which will indeed astonish you and the world. Do any of you say this
will never be done? I assure you that God will accomplish it--if
nothing else will answer, he will hurl tyrants and devils into _atoms_
and make way for his people. But O my brethren! I say unto you again,
you must go to work and _prepare the way_ of the Lord.

There is a great work for you to do, as trifling as some of you may
think of it. You have to prove to the Americans and the world, that we
are MEN, and not _brutes_ as we have been represented, and by millions
treated. Remember, to let the aim of your labours among your brethren,
and particularly the youths, be the dissemination of education and
religion. It is lamentable, that many of our children go to school,
from four until they are eight or ten, and sometimes fifteen years of
age, and leave school knowing but a little more about the grammar of
their language than a horse does about handling a musket--and not a
few of them are really so ignorant, that they are unable to answer a
person correctly, general questions in geography, and to hear them
read would only be to disgust a man who has a taste for reading;
which, to do well, as trifling as it may appear to some, (to the
ignorant in particular) is a great part of learning. Some few of them,
may make out to scribble tolerably well, over a half sheet of paper,
which I believe has hitherto been a powerful obstacle in our way, to
keep us from acquiring knowledge. An ignorant father, who knows no
more than what natur