our own Diocese of East Carolina, the negroes are
formally and legally on the same basis as the whites; but is that
satisfactory? Not at all. The negro laity rarely go to the Council. The
negro clergy go; but they take a back seat; they have nothing to do or
say; they are not expected to show their interest or their will, except
by voting. Instead of its doing them good to come to the Council, it
really does them harm. They are depressed, they feel the difference
between themselves and the white men; they have little or no opportunity
to take responsibility and to develop Christian manhood. Perceiving this
state of things, the clear headed leader of the forces for separation in
the Diocese of North Carolina tells me that he is urging this separation
for the real good of the negro as well as for the growth and influence
of the Church among the white people of the State.

The fact is, say what we will about it--it would carry me too far
afield to explain it to-night--that the negro cannot work together on
equality with the white man; he either assumes an apparent insolence
and stubbornness, which the whites will not allow; or he puts on a
civility and submission, which strips him of his manhood. So, we are
placed in this condition: when we keep the negro close to us on formal
equality, he has no real opportunity to grow and develop in the true
characteristics of manhood; when we put him off in an inferior diocesan
Convocation, he feels that he is not treated as a man; he is forced
steadily to realize his inferiority to the white man, that inferiority
declared and impressed upon him by the Church of God. This, it seems
to me, is the chief reason why we are not now growing as we ought to
among the leading influential negroes of the South; and the reason why
there is much restlessness and want of satisfaction among the negroes
who are already in the Church.

What ought we to do to meet these conditions? Let us turn aside for a
moment to consider the general conditions of the negroes and their
relation to the white people. We have to-day about the same relative
proportion of blacks to whites in the whole country as we had in
1860--about 12 per cent.--; and we have nearly the same in the South,
about 40 per cent. What is to become of the negro for the next fifty
years? No man would dare suggest an answer looking farther ahead than
that: God only knows. Some say he will amalgamate with the whites. Many
thought so immediately a