. I hope
you will forgive me that thought, when I tell you that now I know what
ignorance it revealed in me. The great need is the strongest argument
for the highest education. Because of your great numbers, and because
of your ever intenser racial self-respect, the Negro must educate the
Negro, be physician for the Negro, preach to the Negro, nurse the Negro,
lead the Negro in all his upward effort. Otherwise these things will be
done badly, or patronizingly, or not at all.

But if you are to do your own educational work, your educators must be
fully equipped. It is not possible to send the whole race to college,
but it is possible to send college-trained youth to the race. For this
reason our church has established normal schools, colleges of liberal
arts, professional schools, homes for college girls, so that the coming
leaders of your people may have access to the best the world offers in
science and literature, in medicine and law, in business and religion.

You will not mistake my purpose, I am sure, in saying that you know
better than we can guess how your people, through no fault of theirs,
have been long in bondage to the unskilled hand, the unawakened mind,
and the uninspired heart. But it is more and more an unwilling bondage.

And our church, your church, has set up these schools and these
training homes I have mentioned, as though she were saying, in the words
of one of your own wonderful songs, 'Let my people go!' And the results
are coming. Your two bishops, one in the South and one in Africa, your
leaders in the church's highest councils, your educators, your
far-seeing business men, your great preachers, are part of the answer
to your church's passion to give full freedom to all her people.

For you are _her_ people, the people of the Christian Church; we are
all God's people. It seems to me that just now God is interested in
bringing to every race in the world the chance of liberty for hand and
head and heart. God has greater things for us all to do than we can now
understand, but all his purposes must wait on our getting free from
everything that would defeat our work.

Our First-Church young people welcome you because with all else you
represent a great purpose to make religion intelligent. You know, as we
do, that piety to be vital must be mixed with sound learning. You have
the missionary spirit, which never thrives in an atmosphere of
resistance to education. You are 'fellow Christians,' fello