of those who were down, the strengthening
of those who were weak, the succor of those who were hard pressed by
man's inhumanity to man.

It is beautiful to defend those who can not defend themselves, to lift
up the weak, to succor those who are ready to perish. It is heroic,
divine, when the doing so involves peril and sacrifice of self. It is
the essence of the Gospel preached and lived by one who spoke and lived
as never man spoke and lived. It is simple and undefiled Christianity.
Nothing avails to make Senator or President or people Christian but just
this one thing--not race or color or creed, not learning and wealth and
civilization--but kindness to God's poor, to Christ's little ones. Did
you feed them when they were hungry; did you give them to drink when
they were thirsty; did you visit and comfort them when they were in
prison? Those who do these things to the humblest and the blackest of
these little ones of the Republic have done them unto the divine Master,
are in truth His disciples; and those who do them not are not His
followers, whatever may be their profession, but quite the contrary.
They have no part or lot with Him but belong to the evil forces of the
world which are forever opposing the coming of His righteous Kingdom on
earth when all men shall be brothers, when the strong shall everywhere
bear the burdens of the weak.

Inasmuch as William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips,
John Brown, and Abraham Lincoln did it to the least of His little ones
in this Republic, they did it unto Him. They are a goodly company, the
glorious company of the elect of the Republic, its prophets, its
priests, and its kings. And, Sir, inasmuch as you, too, did it to the
Black Battalion in their dire need, you did it unto Christ, and you are
now henceforth and forevermore to enter into the supreme joy of that
supreme service and sacrifice. You lost, Sir, your seat in the Senate,
it is true, but you have won an enduring place in a race's heart, its
enduring love and gratitude, and the plaudit of the divine Master, "Well
done, good and faithful servant," uttered from the lips of all good men
and true the country over.

EQUALITY OF RIGHTS FOR ALL CITIZENS, BLACK AND WHITE, ALIKE[40]

BY REV. FRANCIS J. GRIMKE, D. D.

_I Cor. 16:13. "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith,
quit you like men, be strong."_

[Note 40: A discourse delivered in the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian
Church, Washington, D. C., Sund