e
Pass of Thermopylae, the immortal six hundred at Balaklava, Trafalgar,
Waterloo, Quebec, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and Appomattox; I would forget
its marvelous accumulations of wealth; its additions to the literature
of the world, and point to the single fact that it has done the most to
spread the religion of Jesus Christ, as the greatest thing it has
accomplished for the betterment of the human family.

The Jews preserved the idea of a one God, and gave the ethics to
religion--the ten commandements, the Lord's Prayer, and the Sermon on
the Mount; the Greeks contributed philosophy; the Romans, polity; the
Teutons, liberty and breadth of thought; but it remained to the
Anglo-Saxon implicitly to obey the divine command: "Go ye into all the
world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."

If some man would ask me the one act on the part of my own race that
gives to me the greatest hope for the Negro's ultimate elevation to the
heights of civilization and culture, I would not revel in ancient lore
to prove them the pioneers in civilization, nor would I point to their
marvelous progress since Emancipation that has surprised their most
sanguine friends, but I would take the single idea of their unquestioned
acceptance of the dogmas and tenets of the Christian religion as
promulgated by the Anglo-Saxon, as the highest evidence of the future
possibilities of the race.

Ours was indeed a wonderful faith that overleaped the barriers of
ecclesiastical juggling to justify from Holy Writ the iniquitous traffic
in human flesh and blood; forgot the glaring inconsistencies of a
religion that prayed, on Sunday, "Our Father which art in heaven," and
on Monday sold a brother, who, though cut in ebony, was yet the image of
the Divine. The Negro had in very truth,

"That faith that would not shrink,
Tho' pressed by every foe;
That would not tremble on the brink
Of any earthly woe.
That faith that shone more bright and clear
When trials reigned without;
That, when in danger, knew no fear,
In darkness felt no doubt."

If it is indeed true that "by faith are ye saved," not only in this
world, but in the world to come, then God will vouchsafe to us a most
abundant salvation.

It is my blessed privilege to-night, while you are pleading for the
"Winning of a generation," and at this special session for "the relation
of the Sunday-school to missions, both home and foreign," to plead for
my people