ist,
or Episcopalian, or Presbyterian, or of Congregational predilection,
were wise in their day and generation, and paved the way for the best
work of Negro development ever undertaken in this country. Until we had
the Negro Church, we had not the Negro school, and the one was the
natural forerunner and concomitant of the other, opening up avenues for
the preacher, the teacher, the lawyer, the physician, the editor, the
orator, and the spokesman of and for the race.

* * * * *

The Negro Church has passed the experimental stage. It is no longer in a
stage of incubation. It is an actuality,--an active, aggressive, and
progressive reality. It has thoroughly established its rights to
existence and its indispensability as a religious force and influence.
Our religious fervor may at times appear to be unduly emotional and
lacking in solemnity, but even this is pardonable, and we are reminded
that this is an emotional age, and we must not forget that the great
Penticostal awakening, in the early days of Christianity, provoked a
similar criticism from the unaroused and unaffected unbelievers. The
Negro Church of the future may be less emotional, but if the Church is
to survive and throw off a cold formality which threatens to sap its
very life-blood, it must not get away from its time-honored, deep
spirituality, for without the Spirit the seemingly religious body is
dead. Our Church of the future as well as our Church of the present will
take care that no new dogmas of exotic growth will deprive it of those
eternal verities which constitute the fundamentals of our Christian
faith. These verities of our religion have their foundation in the
teachings of our Great Redeemer himself, who is the very embodiment of
all Truth.

The Negro Church of the future will address itself to the correction of
present-day evils in both Church and State. It will emphasize the
teaching that the highest form of virtue is the purest form of love. It
will demand that men and women, and Christian professors especially,
exemplify in their own lives and habits the religion they make bold to
proclaim. It will insist upon the remedying of great wrongs from which
countless numbers suffer,--whether these wrongs be unfair and unjust
discriminations in public places, on the common thoroughfares, in the
courts and halls of justice, in the Congress, the legislature or the
municipal councils,--everywhere the Church will condemn and protest and
fulminate aga