, 1,000
lawyers, 20,000 ordained ministers, 75,000 business men, 400 patentees,
and 250,000 farms all paid for, as evidences of our possibilities, but
proudest of the fact that nearly three millions of our almost ten
millions of Negroes are professing Christians. It is true that the black
man is not always the best kind of a Christian. He is often rather crude
in worship, with a rather hazy idea of the connection between religion
and morality. A colored man, on making a loud profession of religion,
was asked if he were going to pay a certain debt he had contracted,
remarked, "'Ligun is 'ligun, an' bisnes' is bisnes', an' I aint gwy mix
um," yet I am afraid ours is not the only race that fails to "mix um,"
and he does not have to go far to find others with advantages far
superior to his, who have not reached the delectable mountain. We, like
others, are seeking higher ground, and some have almost reached it.
Thank God we can point to thousands of Negro Christians whose faith is
as strong as that of the prophets of old, and whose lives are as pure
and sweet as the morning dew.

Our greatest curse to-day is the rum-shop, kept far too often by men of
the developed and forward race to filch from us our hard earnings, and
give us shame and misery in return. And a man who would deliberately
debauch and hinder a backward race, struggling for the light, would "rob
the dead, steal the orphan's bread, pillage the palace of the King of
Kings, and clip the angels' pinions while they sing."

Right by the side of this hindrance, especially in the country
districts, is our ignorant, and, in too many cases, venial ministry, for
ignorance is the greatest curse on earth, save sin. The Sunday-school is
destined to be the most potent factor in the removal of this evil. As
our children see the light as revealed in the Sunday-school by the
teachers of God's word, they will demand an intelligent and moral
ministry and will support no other. Let me say to you that there is no
agency doing more in that absolutely necessary and fundamental line than
this God-sent association.

Wherever your missionaries have gone, there have been magical and
positive changes for good, and the elevating power of this work for us
can never be told. God bless the thousands of Sunday-school teachers
whose names may never be known outside their immediate circles, and yet
are doing a work so grand and noble that angels would delight to come
down and bear them compan