le who raise up from out
their midst a cultivated class, who can plead their own cause and state
their own case, will fail of a hearing before the just judgment of
mankind.

The educated Negro to-day represents the first generation grown to the
fullness of the stature of manhood under the influence and power of
education. They are the first ripened fruit of philanthropy, and by them
alone will the wisdom or folly of that philanthropy be justified. The
hope of the race is focused in them. They are the headlight to direct
the pathway through the dangers and vicissitudes of the wilderness. For
want of vision, the people perish; for want of wise direction, they
stumble and fall. There is no body of men in the world to-day, nor in
the history of the world, who have, or ever have had, greater
responsibilities or more coveted opportunities than devolves upon the
educated Negro to-day. It is, indeed, a privilege to be a Negro of light
and leading in such a time as this. The incidental embarrassments and
disadvantages which for the time being must be endured are not to be
compared with the far more exceeding weight of privileges and glory
which awaits him if he rises to these high demands. For such a privilege
well may he forego the pleasure of civilization for a season.

His world consists of 10,000,000 souls, who have wrapped up in them all
the needs and necessities, powers and possibilities, of human nature;
they contain all the norms of civilization, from its roots to its
florescence. His is the task to develop and vitalize these smothered
faculties and potentialities. His education will prove to be but vanity
and vexation of spirit, unless it ultimates in this task. He is the salt
of the earth, and if the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be
salted? If the light within the racial world be darkness, how great is
that darkness?

The highest call of the civilization of the world to-day is to the
educated young men of the belated races. The educated young manhood of
Japan, China, India, Egypt, and Turkey must lift their own people up to
the level of their own high conception. They must partake of the best
things in the civilization of Europe and show them unto their own
people. The task of the educated American Negro is the same as theirs,
intensified, perhaps, by the more difficult and intricate tangle of
circumstances and conditions with which he has to deal.

He cannot afford to sink into slothful satisfaction and