se faster than the
white population. From 1870 to 1880, in the eight States mentioned
above, they increased thirty-four per cent., the whites only
twenty-seven per cent. The immigration of foreign-born whites will not
change the proportionate difference of increase, as the foreign-born
white population has decreased 30,000 since the war, and the immigration
of northern-born whites amounts to only a fraction of one per cent.
According to the present rate of increase, the colored race in one
hundred years from now will have a population many millions in excess of
the whites, since, while it will take thirty-five years for the white
race to double its numbers, the blacks will do so every twenty years. In
less than twenty-five years from this date, the colored race in the
South will outnumber the whites in nearly all the States, and then the
world will witness a conflict of races, the aspiration of the negro
against the caste-prejudice of the white, the end and result of which no
man can foresee.

These facts all point to the greatness of the work undertaken by this
Association. Christian education is the only education for a race having
before it such a future. The illiteracy which we deplore must be
overcome, but something more than that; that change must be provided
for, when the Negro in large numbers will pass from the quiet and
peaceful pursuits of agriculture to be massed together in mine and
factory and the work of the mechanic arts, but something more than that;
intelligence for the burden of citizenship must be given, but something
more than that; incentives to the accumulation of property and the
building of homes for themselves and their families must be encouraged,
but something more than that must be done. If we were simply patriots,
we would educate these people; if we were only philanthropists, or wise
statesmen, or political economists, we would still feel bound to educate
them. But we are more than these, we are Christians, and so there is one
other thing we must do besides these I have mentioned, something which
includes all these and so is greater than they all--and that thing is to
make them Christian. Education is a part of the means to be used, and
not the total end and aim.

For what is education? Not the mere accumulation of knowledge, nor the
mere training of the powers of the mind, but the building of manhood.
You have tempered your Damascus blade, but who is going to hold it--the
patriot, or th