ally, yea, a
thousand times, yea. A negative answer would be the quintessence of
ignorance. From a recent careful survey of every Southern state
through nearly one hundred trusty observers, I have the testimony that
the young women are pure in large numbers, and are rapidly increasing
in an intense desire and determination to preserve themselves chaste
and pure from the lustful approaches of the sinner, and that the
number of legally and lovingly married families, purely preserved in
the domestic and social virtues among husbands and wives, sons and
daughters, is so far beyond the days of slavery that a comparison
would minify the difference.

The marvel is, that the Negro has sufficient moral vitality left to
cut his way through the whirlpool of licentiousness to the solid rock
of Christian character. From the harem life of promiscuous and
unnameable sins of slavery, some of which were the natural and fatal
growth of pagan vices, others the fruit of prostitution, to the making
of one clean, beautiful, noble and divine family and home, covers a
period of intense, moral, spiritual and intellectual development, more
significant than the geologic transformation of ages. Be it known that
this one family can be duplicated by a hundred thousand and more.

The moral and social darkness has not been increased either in quality
or intensity. The splendid results of philanthropic effort have
served only as a small tallow candle which has been brought into the
darkness of this Egyptian night, and the darkness has thickened
relatively only because the light has been brought in. That faint and
flickering light reveals how great the darkness has been, and is. Some
think that the shadows are lengthening into eternal night for the
Negro, but that flickering light within has upon it the breath of God
which will some day fan it into the white and penetrating blazes of
the electro-carbon searchlight, that shall chase away the curse of
slavery. Thus, from every point of view, the growth of the Negro has
more than kept pace with his opportunities.

FOURTH PAPER.

DID THE AMERICAN NEGRO MAKE, IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ACHIEVEMENTS
ALONG THE LINES OF WEALTH, MORALITY, EDUCATION, ETC., COMMENSURATE
WITH HIS OPPORTUNITIES? IF SO, WHAT ACHIEVEMENTS DID HE MAKE?

BY REV. M. C. B. MASON.

[Illustration: Rev. M. C. B. Mason, Ph. D.]

REV. M. C. B. MASON, PH. D.

Rev. Dr. M. C. B. Mason, senior corresponding secr