by the opinion of the village squire, doctor, or other notables. If their teachers are respected by the white leaders it increases tenfold their own respect for them, and, therefore, their power to do good. As to how such helpful recognition shall be given no rules will answer. Good sense, a kind heart, and a just spirit, will make it easy in every case. It is needless to talk of what we could or could not have done fifteen years ago. It is better to do our duty to-day than to defend the past or to be "consistent" with its mistakes. It is enough to know that we, of to-day, can now help this good work in a hundred ways. Will we do it? Most certainly provided we be wise and have the spirit of Christ within us.

No doubt this question will take on new phases in the not distant future. It is certain that as colored men and women increase in numbers they will be in demand, by their people at least, for various services. After a while there will be many negro lawyers and doctors. And there seems to me to be no sensible reason why there should not be trained men to serve their race in these important and necessary callings. There is already in Nashville, Tennessee-city of universities-a good medical school for negroes. There is another in North Carolina, and possibly others. The opening of the "Meharry Medical College," in the spring of 1880, was attended, and the enterprise sanc

tioned, by many of the first men of the State and city. *

In all these directions of educated African talent and energy the "supply" will be regulated by the "demand." Whatever new factors in this equation the future develops, let the men of the future adjust. In these respects, at least, let the future take care of itself.

As for our part, let us observe the wise counsel of Thomas Carlyle, "Do the duty that lies nearest thee; the next will already have become plainer.". We may be sure that we can, in no way, get ready for the future, if we fail to take care of the present. With or without us the future comes, with all its possibilities; and this good and necessary work of teaching and lifting up the negro race in the South will go on, with or without our help. We may greatly retard-we cannot, were we foolish enough to try, effectually or permanently hinder-its progBut this we can do: by neglect and failure in our duty now, we can rob ourselves of vast benefits the future will bring to us, if we are faithful to-day.

ress.

There has never been a time when the negro, whether slave or freedman, has not been upon the heart and conscience of thousands of good people

*One of its chief founders, Mr. Hugh Meharry, died near the close of 1880, at his home in Dement, Illinois, in a good old age, full of faith and good works.

in the South-as good people as live in this world. Multitudes of them have tried, in many ways, to be useful to the negro. They have done unspeakably more than they have had credit for. They have not had as many opportunities, since 1865, to be useful to the negro as uninformed persons have supposed. For a long time the negro wanted little that we could give him, except wages for his work, and help when he got into trouble. Then he knew where to go. The negro himself was, for a time, exclusive; he did not care to have Southern white men in his churches or about his schools. They were taught, by evil persons, to suspect us all. But all this-explain it as any please—is changing. We are now welcomed to their pulpits as we have not been welcomed in fifteen years. On this point, I speak that I do know, and testify that I have seen.

I wish to be truthful. Many of our people have not been as prompt to accept these friendly overtures as, it seems to me, they ought to have been. Many could have done more than they have done. I think I know my neighbors and the people of the South, and I give it as my opinion that there is among us a wide-spread feeling of awakened conscience as to our relations to the negroes; thousands of us feel, and feel deeply, that we ought to do more; and thousands of us intend to do more for their social, mental, and religious welfare.

We

etter excuses ten, even five, years ago than

we have now. Indeed, there is little excuse for us at this time, 1881, if we fail to do a great and gracious work for the moral uplifting of the negroes. It seems to me far less important that any great scheme of things be devised than that each Christian man and woman do whatever useful thing for the negro there may come to hand. In this way the saving leaven will be diffused "till the whole be leavened." For example, it came to my knowledge some time ago that a little boy, in his eleventh year, has been for some time teaching a negro man thirty years old, and a servant in his father's family, to read and "add sums." Why cannot this little effort be repeated in half a million Southern families at once, and without the intervention of a "society" or the appropriation of a dollar? What a harvest would follow! what new inspirations! what re-awakening of kindly affections! what cementing of friendly ties! what light and truth and grace, with God's blessings on both races and upon the whole country!

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honest man who can read and understan statistics will study the United States Censu or the Annual Reports of the Honorable Commi sioner of Education, and deny that there is an ap palling mass of illiteracy in the Southern States, bot among the white people and the negroes. As to th illiteracy of the negroes, (who make the vast majorit of untaught people in the South,) something ma be said in extenuation. As to illiteracy among th white people of the South, I do not know an excuse good enough to offer. I wish I did.

In the United States Senate, December 15, 1880 the Hon. Joseph E. Brown, one of the senator from Georgia, delivered an able speech on the "Bil to Establish an Educational Fund," etc. A few paragraphs I quote because they state fairly a case not fully understood, it seems. Senator Brown, after describing the processes by which the negro became a freeman and a voter, proceeds to state the attitude of the South toward the question of his education then and now. The senator said:

"A grave problem arises here for solution. They