have
descended in the scale, their finer sensibilities having become
blunted by vice and crime, so that education on moral and religious
lines has no charms for them. Sinai's majestic summit and moral law
are as chaff to them, and as freedom has given a greater and better
opportunity for the morally good to improve and rise, so it has given
the same for this class to descend and become more and more corrupt.
Indeed, they have gone lower than their fathers on this line. But the
character of a race is not to be judged by its degraded element, but
by the upper and middle classes, which form the major portion of any
race and give it a standing along the line of moral and religious
civilization. We conclude by saying that the young Negro is an
improvement morally upon his father.

First, because freedom has given to the young Negro aspirations for a
purer life, which his father did not have.

Second. The moral atmosphere of the young Negro's home life is better
than that of the old Negro.

Third. The young Negro's educational advantages give him higher
conceptions of life and duty than those had by his father.

Fourth. The young Negro has a more enlightened pulpit than his father
had to preach a broader and more comprehensive gospel to him, and to
thus give him more correct ideas of life.

Now these superior advantages, which the young Negro has, make it
possible for him to outstrip his father in moral accomplishments, and
the arguments of his enemies to the contrary notwithstanding, the
educated young Negro presents a striking contrast in point of morality
to the old Negro.

THIRD PAPER.

IS THE YOUNG NEGRO AN IMPROVEMENT, MORALLY, ON HIS FATHER?

BY REV. E. C. MORRIS, D. D.

[Illustration: E. C. Morris, D. D.]

REV. E. C. MORRIS, D. D.

On May 7, 1855, near Springplace on the Connesauga, in the
chestnut hills of North Georgia, of slave parentage, was
born E. C. Morris, now the President of the National Baptist
Convention, which is the largest deliberative body of
Negroes in the world, the editor-in-chief of the Sunday
School series issued by the National Baptist Publishing
Board, the President of the Arkansas Baptist State
Convention, and pastor of the Centennial Baptist Church of
Helena, Arkansas. His early education was through the common
school, but practically from nature and necessity. From
earliest childhood he was peculiar