Northern benevolence in the negroes' behalf, if the stronger and more numerous race, in the very midst of which he lives, and moves, and has his being, whose tenant he is, whose influence he can no more escape than he can escape the atmosphere he breathes, if this race is either hostile or indifferent to the efforts that are being made to do him good and to lift him up? Much the Northern people have done with little help from us; much they can and will do without our help; but they can and will do unspeakably more with it. What waste of energy, what spoiling of noble schemes of usefulness, what hinderance to our own progress as well as the negroes', what marring of what ought to be a divinely beautiful and beneficent work, must result from foolish and sinful antagonism in feeling and purpose and method between the white man from the North and the white man in the South!

I do not believe that there is any thing insuperable between these two men. They are not fools, though they exhibit folly upon occasion; they are not visionary, though they are sometimes impracticable; they are not relentless, though they are sometimes hot of temper; they are not blind, though they are sometimes slow to learn; they will yet be fraternal, though they have been hard and stubborn fighters through many years and on many fields. These men will yet understand one another. Per haps not to-morrow. Well, then, after a while,

when the blindest of us, on either side, are silent in death.

Let us think on this! Ten years toward the close of a generation's life makes a great difference. Wise men, in Church as well as State, who have read history, and who know human nature, both in its strength and weakness, will take the fact and law of mortality-most beneficent law it is!—into their estimates for future times and relations.

Nothing is more certain than this, and yet many leaders, who ought to know and do not "know what Israel ought to do," are forgetful or blind. An impulse of passion or sentiment that carries the policy that prevails through one generation cannot be depended on for the next. If we trust a great policy to such a current, it is as if one should undertake to navigate a little river swollen with a summer flood: such a stream cannot be depended on-it

runs out.

The great ship had better trust the seaso wide and deep. And if we have any great policy for Churches or States, nothing is deep enough to float us above all rocks and shoals but principles that are eternally right.

The impulses that broke out in war in 1861, having given forth many premonitory mutterings before that time, are already exhausting themselves. The grave is, next to grace, the greatest extinguisher of wrath. Before now the "white rose" of York and the "red rose” of Lancaster have blended their

colors. A great passion in Church or Nation runs its course, like a fever; the patient recovers and the fever dies; or fever and patient die together. The great tidal wave of 1854, that overwhelmed the town of Samoda in Japan, had sunk to a few inches when it broke against the firm coast of California. The slight recoil was never felt in the far China Sea. We sometimes forget how wide and deep is the ocean of human life.

If the spirit of wisdom and grace be in them, these white men of the North and these white men of the South will yet understand each other, they will yet bury their antagonisms in spite of differences that may be beyond their control-differences good "after their kind;" and each working out, as God enables him, his own duty and destiny, they will at last unite to perform a common duty to their dark-skinned brother, brought so strangely to our country and delivered to our care that the great and world-wide plans of the Father of all for the good of all may be fairly and fully accomplished.

Ο

CHAPTER XII.

THE METHODS OF OUR PROBLEM.

NE thing I assume as settled forever: such

a problem as we have in hand never was solved, never can be solved, on any theory or system of mere repression. There has been no lack of experiments. History teems with examples, both in ancient and in modern times. As well try to prevent volcanic eruptions by shutting down our little furnace gates upon the fires that burn at the heart of the earth.

Repression may well be called the Egyptian theory of goverment; Pharaoh made long trial of it, with what result the world knows. It is the Russian theory now; it has failed notably, and men wait to see what explosions and disasters are yet to come. Repression has failed in Ireland. It has not succeeded with our American Indians. It was tried for generations on Hungary and failed utterly. The method of recognition, of lifting up, has been tried in Hungary only a few years and it succeeds. This method always succeeds; the other always fails. The system of mere repression fails everywhere, in the family, the school, the factory, the

State, the Church. Rome has made every possible use of repression. If it succeeded after a fashion, during the Dark Ages, it fails now that all men, as well as Galileo, have found "that the world does move." The repressive system is tyranny. It violates the divine will; it is out of harmony with eternal righteousness; it subverts the order of nature as well as of grace. Mere repression cannot succeed where there is life, except to destroy. But it is not always that it destroys the proposed victim; it destroyed Pharaoh; Israel was delivered out of his hands. There are other such instances, and very instructive they are.

The problem before us, the Northern and Southern people together, and the Southern people in particular, is the right education and elevation of our black brother, the free negro, in our midst. Do not, beloved white brother, scare at this word "elevation." Nothing is said about putting the negro above the white man."

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Let me whisper a secret in your ear: That cannot be done unless you get below him. Think of this, and if you find yourself underneath blame yourself. The negro cannot rise simply because he is black; the white man cannot stay up simply because he is white. A man rises, not by the color of his skin, but by intelligence, industry, and integrity. The foremost man in these excellences and virtues must, in the long run, be also the highest man. And it ought to be so. Ignorance, in