WHAT SHALL THE HARVEST BE?
National Sermon;
OR, A
OF PLAIN TALKS
Colored People of America,
ON THEIR
PROBLEMS.
DELIVERED
January 17th, 24th, 31st, and Feb. 14th, 1892,
BY THE
Rev. J. W. E. BOWEN, Ph. D„
IN THE
ASBURY MEHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
washington, d. 0.
Price, 25 Cents.
WHAT SHALL THE HARVEST BE?
A
National Sermon;
OR, A
SERIES OF PLAIN TALKS
TO THE
Colored People of America,
ON THEIR
PROBLEMS.
DELIVERED1
January i7tli, 24th, 31st, and Feb, 14th,, 1892,,
BY THE
Rev. J. W. E. BOWEN, PL D.,
IN THE
ASBURY MEHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
CONTENTS.
Page.
I.—What Shall the Harvest Be? . ... -i
II".—The Disciplinary Character oe Affliction, . . 9
III.—What Shall the Harvest Be in the Morals of
Our Families? . . . .. . . 19
IV.—The Duty of the Hour, , , „ . „ .31
HOWARD UNIVERSITY PRINT.
PREFACE.
'The following letter and Resolution are self-explanatory,
Washington, D. C., Feb. 21, 1892,
liev. J. W. E» Bowen, ph. z\-
Dear Sir: Having heard the series ©f sermons preached by you
entitled, "What Shall the Harvest Be?" and being convinced that
their wide circulation would contribute largely to the growth and
development of a correct public sentiment and a proper course of
policy with respect to what is popularly known as "The Negro
Problem," we most respectfully request that you consent to their
publication in pamphlet form.
We have the honor, Dear Doctor, to subscribe ourselves,
Very respectfully yours:
J. W. CromweU,,
Principal of the Garnet Public School.
George W. Cook,
Principal of Normal Department Howard University.
Jno-. H. Smyth,
Ex-Minister to Liberia, Africa.
Andrew F, Hii,yer.
Jno. F, Cook,
Ex- Collector of the District of Columbia.
James M, Ricks,
Aitorney-at-Law■.
From the Minutes of the Official Board of Asbury Methodist
Episcopal Church, held Feb. 15th, 1892.
"Resolved: That the" Official Board heartily endorse and unani¬
mously approve of the ideas expressed by our pastor, the Rev. J.
W. E. Bowen, Ph. D. in his series of sermons entitled, "What Shall
the Harvest Be ?" delivered in our church during the past four
weeks, and we unite in requesting him to publish the same in pam¬
phlet form for distribution with the conviction that a general read¬
ing of the same will produce a healthful moral effect upon us as a
people.''
George Martin, Secretary.
iv
PREFACE.
The writer of these sermons makes no such pretentious claims as
to have sounded the depths or to have given the final word upon the
vital questions herein touched upon. All that can be claimed is,
that they are the honest convictions of an honest student of history
and of the affairs of men, delivered for the good of his race. The
views herein expressed, therefore, are tentative and suggestive of a
possible solution of our vexatious problems. I call particular atten¬
tion to the "Manhood Problem" as the one that takes priority in
importance and consideration. I also refer to what is popularly
known as the "Negro Problem," and to its all-comprehending fea¬
ture, "Political Equality" as secondary and as existing only because
the first and great problem remains unsolved. I believe that the
solution of the first will dissipate the second as the sun scatters the
morning dew. Moreovor, I record my unqualified belief in the cor¬
rect method applied in the various schools of christian learning
among us.
I hold that the Christian pulpit, whose pastor is the president of
the largest University among us, the University of the Masses, ought
to address itself faithfully to these living questions of civic and mor¬
al importance and ultimately stir the whole people in the direction
of a higher life. My faith in the ultimate solution of all of these
problems rests in the Gospel of the Son of God, with its New Tes¬
tament ethics clearly apprehended, sharply defined, and vigor-
usly applied to every phase of our complex life.
I send forth these sermons with the hope that they may stimulate
abler minds and strengthen stronger hands to take hold of these great
questions among us, and also with the desire that this attempt may
contribute its quota of inspiration among the people to readjust
their lives and begin in earnest the making of a great and good
people.
J. W. E. Bowen.
WASHINGTON, d. c., Feb., 1892.
What Shall the Harvest Be?
*' The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath
sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God,
and walk in his ways."—DEuT. xxyin: 9.
The times are ominous; ominous I believe not for evil, but for
good. The market of thought is constantly agitating some living
question of political, social, moral and religious issue. Every pos¬
sible subject which is submitted to our consideration is cast in the
forms of the most exacting logic. Even religion, though divinely
inspired, is put into the crucible of thought, and is held that it
should stand and enter into the sure possessions of mankind only
after it has met the "law of the sufficient reason." The blaze of
the electric century is upon us; every department of life pulsates
with the subtle power, and man is in haste. My only anxiety^is,
that in our haste, we might forget certain cardinal principles, the
neglect of which must bring mortification, defeat and death. I
put it down as the fundamental article of our social, political and
religious, creed, that God must be taken into the account. It is ful¬
ly illustrated in the history of nations and individuals, that, that
people that seeks the highest good, or to perpetuate its life in utter
disregard of the Divine Being, finds that its mightiest efforts are
rewarded only with defeat. Nothing permanently good can be es¬
tablished without His assistance.
The uncertainty that attaches to the Republic of France, the
prevalent infidelity in its high circles, and the wide-spreading com¬
munism in its low circles is due today, not so much to the geo¬
graphic and climactic conditions of its territory, or to the physical
and moral constituents of the "Trench people, as to the misdirected
and abortive effort of France in the comparatively recent past to oblit¬
erate the name of God from its history and to crush out the feeling of
the divinity that is within man. France stands a conspicuous example
2
2
WHAT SHAIX THE) HARVEST BE?
and an emphatic warning to all nations that they should never tam¬
per with the idea of God. Just here comes in the anxiety of
many thinking men for the nation and for the people with whom
we are identified. 'Wealth, social standing, positions of honor and
trust, are all means that should be reasonably and diligently sought
after. But if this nation or this people ever attain such heights
that it will forget the rock from which it was hewn, or the pit from
which it was dug; if we should ever become drunken in the pos¬
session of material prosperity; or if we should ever become so
learned (?) or cultured (?) as to substitute aesthetic culture for relig¬
ious culture and genuine piety, then the lamp in the temple of our
prosperity will go out; and I would chisel in deep black letters
above its door posts "Ichabod," for the glory is departed.
You will observe from the text, that the condition of obedience
to God in all his commandments was the absolute prerequisite to
the establishment of Israel as a great and holy people. And the
scattered and politically weak condition today of that once proud
people is a living commentary upon that passage of scripture in
which God declared that he would scatter them and make them
a byword among all peoples should they cease to walk in his stat¬
utes and turn away from him to the worship of other gods. If,
therefore, it is true that history repeats itself, there is at least a note
of warning to other peoples in this great fact.
Holiness unto the L,ord is to triumph and is to characterize every
people. To say otherwise were to speak ignorantly of the nature
of existence and of the trend of providence. That the principle of
righteousness will ultimately triumph is not only the song of proph -
ecy, but the hope and desire of all men. A belief in the future
golden day of the race when men shall see, not through a glass
darkly, but face to face, gives buoyancy and courage to the efforts
of christians in bringing all men to the knowledge of the truth as
it is in Christ. The golden age is not in the past as the heathens
ignorantly taught, but it is before us somewhere in the dim tracery
of the future, and possibly we may have come to the edge of this new
heaven. I do not believe that that age will find its characteristics
so much in the material acquisitions as in the spiritual triumphs of
the soul and in a proper knowledge of our relation to God.
All material conquests and discoveries are subservient to the spir¬
itual; the temporal is only its vessel, and when man is perfectly re¬
deemed and the life in God is made fully manifest in him, it will be dis-
what shalylv the) harvest be?
3
covered that a perfect harmony exists between the subserviency of
nature to'the spiritual on the one hand, and on the other hand the es¬
sential superiority of the spiritual over nature. The effort of Chris¬
tianity is that God should walk and talk with man in the new Gar¬
den of Eden—that this sinful creature may be able to say without
compunctions of conscience, "Abba Father." Redemption and
holiness are to become the themes of science, the essence of phi¬
losophy, the song of poetry, the inspiration of literature, and the
practical experience of the human heart. This is the golden chain
that runs through all scripture history. Man is to be presented be¬
fore God without spot, and holiness is to be the legal tender upon
all transactions. The voice of God so speaks and the hand of
Providence so directs.
I have come to speak to you my friends, upon some home ques¬
tions of vital concern. I do not covet the ear of the Republic at
large today. I will be content with reaching your ear with the
hope that some thought uttered might prove a seed-thought which
shall produce fruit in the purification and elevation of my race. We
must clearly and fully believe that there is a "divinit}'- that shapes
our lives, rough hew them as we may,'' and that He presides and
directs in the destinies of nations, races and individuals, and that
in our particular history, the hand of Providence is as manifest as it
was in that of the Ancient Hebrews. Moreover, if we will purge
ourselves from the evil that is among us, and return or destroy the
golden wedge and the Babylonish garment, that same Hand will ever
be our guide and protector. My truth to you, my friends, is unsavory,
but remember that it is the truth that shall make men free. "Hear
me for my cause and be silent that ye may hear.''
i.—The Harvest oe Fau, is the Grown Seed oe Spring.
The Scriptures are rationally and scientifically true, and though
the language used, is that of common sense, the truth conveyed is
bed-rock. Not one truth which they set forth and which has been
philosophically explained has been found to be in antagonism with
truth as found in nature. And when they say in terse language
"whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap," their biblical au¬
thority and soundness hears an echo in the concensus of mankind
and in the common experiences of daily life. That it is so, no half
4
WHAT SHAUv THE HARVEST BE?
witted farmer will risk his half wit in denying it. Our Master •asks in
his own inimitable way, "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs
of thistles?" and then crystalizes the experience of men by saying,
"a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree
bring forth good fruit." He sets clearly before us the utter impos¬
sibility that good should come out of evil. Figs produce figs, thorns
bring forth thorns, and apples blossom and ripen on apple trees.
This is an axiomatic natural law to which there is no exception,
and it is fully verified in daily experiments.
In the spiritual realm, the same inexorable law obtains and is
equally true and applicable to its many phases. Degenerate parents
produce degenerate children. It is just as impossible and absurd to
expect that a pure, clean, virtuous, sober and pious child shall come
out of a licentious, lecherous, drunken and immoral home, as to ex¬
pect that God should lie. One of the first utterances of Holy Writ
touching, not only the vegetable -and animal kingdom and man in
his physical nature, but also in his mental and moral nature, is that
each had power to reproduce his kind. And though the problem of
the origination of the soul is not satisfactorily solved but is still a
"terra incognita," we have with mathematical certainty, this hard
truth that "like produces like." I hold therefore that the follies,
foibles and sins in our children, are standing proofs of the univers¬
ality of depravity and the presence of the sediment of sin found in
even the best of us. Aye, how true is that Scripture, "all have sin¬
ned and come short of the-glory of God."
Now then, apply these principles of reasoning to our race and ask
in seriousness, "What shall the harvest be," when we shall have
grown to our maturity in the Fall? We stand today with one foot
upon the threshold of an opening century the issues of which are
pregnant with mighty results and it befits us to pause in the rush of
life and inquire what that century will bring forth. L,et lis stand
with both feet upon the shoulders of the past and gather before us
the events of today as an horoscope of time and we will be able to
•detect and depict in the gray dawn 'of the new morning, the events
that will transpire and to read between the lines the story of the
age. Not that, "the sunset of life gives me mystical love," but,
"coming events cast their shadow before." The old infamous and
accursed institution,
"Was blown liellward, from the cannon's mouth."
But that bloody war was but the preliminary skirmish of the out-
WHAT SHAU* THE) HARVEST BE?
5
Standing pickets, or scouring bands to the terrific struggle of
thought upon moral, social, industrial and political questions, by
means of which the freedman was not to remain a freedman forever,
but to realize the blessings and possibilities of a freeman. Allow
me, even at the expense of tediousness, to state fully the issue be¬
fore us.
I am one that believes that there are two problems in which we are
specially interested today, vis, "The Negro Problem" and The
Manhood Problem. "The Negro Problem" is the Nation's prob¬
lem, butit must be borne in mind that the Negro is the major term
«of the major premise. What is it? It is whether the Nation will
incorporate the Negro into its life, so that be shall become a contrib¬
uting and a determining factor in the body-politic, and whether he
shall share in all the rights, privileges, fruits, blessings and protect¬
ion of American Citizenship. This is a momentous problem and
no man dare speak lightly ©fit. Its incorrect solutionis frought
with incalculable evil to both the Nation and the Negro. I am can¬
did enough to admit that it cannot be solved in one generation, by
reason of the complications on both sides. But great as this prob¬
lem is, and fearM as is its possible outcome, it is second in impor¬
tance to the Manhood Problem. This concerns him primarily and the
State secondarily. In this, he is not only the major term, but the
minor also; nay, he, himself is the problem. He must definitely
state it and draw its logical conclusion upon the blackboard of the
nations before its united intelligence. It is whether the Negro will
vindicate for himself a right to stand among the thinking nations of
the world, and to claim citizenship by contributing to the thought¬
ful and material products of civilization in the republic of thought'!
It is whether he will develop those manly and christian virtues
whicli are the essentials of a worthy character and conclusively
prove that the color of his skin is only skin deep and that it does
not reach his brain and heart! *It is whether he will regain in an
educated christian civilization his pristine position in arts and sci¬
ences, in literature and history, in architecture and philosophy, that
lie held in his original home; whether he will come back to the
heights from which he has fallen—to a civilization second only to
this christian civilization in that it lacked the touch of a divine
afflatus.
* A careful study of the fragmentary history of ancient nations reveals the
the fact that the Negro occupied a contributing position to the civilization
of Egypt. The missing link is lost.
6
WHAT SHAIJ, THE HARVEST BE?
For be it remembered, that in his original home reigned once
"all the pomp and magnificence of oriental splendor; that the
grandest ruins Of antiquity are here; that architecture has here
been carried to a perfection which baffled the skill of modern arti¬
sans ; that here flourished large and beautiful cities filled with liter¬
ary, military and commercial men; that Europe is indebted to Africa
for letters and arts; that Greece even traces her civilization to
Egypt, and that while all Europe Was covered with gross darkness,
Africa was radiant with science and literature. Astronony was
taught in African schools before Germany had heard of a school-
house. Africans were clothed in purple and dwelt in palaces when
Englishmen covered themselves with skins of wild beasts and
crawled into low mud huts nothing superior to those now occupied
by Kaffirs and Hottentots." This is the second or manhood prob¬
lem, and I ask what people under the sun has its equal ? Along¬
side of this one the other problem, monstrous as it is in itself, loses
its vast proportions; and moreover, when this latter shall have
been solved, the former will solve itself, and this cannot be solved
in a day.
These two, however, are the great questions for the twentieth
century ; and the settlement of the same must be wrought by him¬
self. I have avoided in the statement of these problems all senti-
mentalism or coloring, and have sought to set before you in plain
and unmistakable language the rugged and stubborn facts which
we must face. We might in our ease and self-complacency con¬
gratulate ourselves upon the marvelous progress of the past twenty-
five years, which stands today as a magnificent and eloquent proof
of the possibilities in the Negro of the future. But self-congratula¬
tion is not the order of the day; we are here to hear plain words
upon our condition and to study the best methods for freeing
ourselves from the weights that hang upon us and which
threaten us with defeat and utter ruin. I would not say one
word to detract from the glory of this achievement of ours
so overwhelming to our enemies, and outstripping the largest
hopes of our most sanguine friends ; neither is it to be lightly spo¬
ken of. Let me repeat, it is not only a magnificent triumph but an
eloquent prophecy of future possibilities. I wish to add, however,
just this piece of cold logic in order to keep us sober in triumph,
that, that progress has nothing behind it with which to be com¬
pared. The past presents only a dark background upon which
these evidences of progress shine forth with the distinctness of bril-
WHAT SHAlyl, THIS HARVEST BE) ?
7
liant mosaics. We will be in better condition in fifty years to insti¬
tute a comparison when this dark background shall have been illu¬
minated with more distinct elements of power and light.
I am an optimist of the purest tjTpe touching the Negro. I be¬
lieve that God has hidden somewhere in the unrevealed future the
solution of all these problems which so vex and disturb us to-day.
But the solution will not come until the Negro shall have reached
his majority. And then will a black Alexander come forth fortified
by constitutional enactments and the moral sentiment of the nation;
panoplied in the virtues of a christian character and with his own
sword of courage and manhood, intelligence, wealth and moral ex¬
cellence, cut the gordion knot and relegate to the dead past every
vexatious problem. Believing this thoroughly, I am anxious that
we do not stop at any half-way house and become a race of medi-
ocres. We should press with vigour on until we have scaled the
topmost peak in all the virtues of excellence and there with the tele¬
scope of truth, sweeping through the world of material and intellectual
progress and swinging through the heavens of divine truth searching
the ways of Providence in history and revelation, we may be able
to exclaim with the immortal Keppler, " O God, I think thy thoughts
after thee." This, my friends, in some meagre sense, is a picture
of the duties fruits, problems and possibilities of the future Fall for
us in the twentieth century.
Today is the seed-time, the next century is the harvest, and the
fruit will be just what we make it. I am in favor of asking now,
what will we do to reach the mark, and win the prize. The living
question in political circles today is what shall be done for the
Negro. There is but one reasonable answer to this question, and
that is, do nothing against him and he will attend to the rest.
Simply treat him as a free American citizen. I do not slightingly
speak of the political hindrances of the Negro, but I am seeking to
draw your attention to the weightier matters of the law.
History has not a single illustration of any race that has even come
up to be counted that did not do so by force of character and by its own
internal exertion. He that would be free must strike the first blow,
aiid this race, if it is to be counted, must resolutely set itself to the
answering of the qu'estion, what shall we do for ourselves. It must
give up the unreasonable and unhistorical basis of expecting to
have its future made for it, and begin with might and main to
write its own history and make its own future. I am a-tfare that the
8
WHAT SHAU, THE HARVEST BE?
unthinking see no cause for anxiety regarding the future; their
highest hopes culminate in the shallow and godless epicureanism
" let us eat and drink few to-morrow we die," and these ought to die.
They sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind; they sow to the
flesh and of the flesh reap corruption.
The solution of the first problem concerns the nation primarily in
a logical sense ; and if it steadfastly refuses to incorporate this
large part of its deserving constituency into its life and thus give
them genuine political existence, it digs its own grave. And if
the: black man, the last comer upon the civilized stage, with the
advantages that surround him, contents himself with being, a '''hewer
of wood and a drawer of water," or is satisfied with a middle ground
between barbarism and civilization, he will establish beyond doubt
the opinion of his enemies that his brain is of the color of his skin..
What shall the harvest be ? Tell me what we are sowing today,
and with the same absolute certainty that we see that two and two
make four, will we be able to see the golden grain of Fall. It is
for us to answer this question, and we need not be in doubt as to its
answer.
I could at this juncture direct your attention with profit and
satisfaction to the noble and heroic efforts now making to ad¬
just properly all of our relations and wisely settle all of our prob¬
lems. But be it known to you and to the American Republic, that
the Negro realizes that he himself is to play the most conspicuous
part in this great drama of finding his place and solving his problems.
We cannot be unconcerned as to the solution of these problems.
And when the " Negro Problem " comes up for final solution and
adjudication, may it please the court to know that the Negro him¬
self will have somewhat to say touching this matter. I would
have you weigh well the acts and deeds of today, for tomorrow they
will come forth with renewed life to perpetuate themselves. In
your hands is your future, and you can make it whatever you
choose. It is for you to say where you will stand, whether at the
bottom of the ladder or at the top. The agencies now at work and
the success thus far achieved unitedly assert and prophesy the in¬
coming of the gray dawn of the millenium which shall ultimately
usher in the blazing midday. Therefore "I,et thine eyes look
right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder
the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn
not to the ri£ht hand nor to the left; remove thy foot from evil."
For " Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap."
II.
The Disciplinary Character of Affliction.
"And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee
these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know
what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or
no."—DEuT. vm: 2.
"When the lamented Lincoln met death at the hands of the assassin,
Jas. A. Garfield being in New York, calmed the frenzied mob
from the balcony of the New York Custom House with this
significant expression of faith in God: " Fellow-citizens: Clouds
and darkness are around him; his pavilion is dark waters and
thick clouds; justice, and judgment are the establishment of his*
throne; mercy and truth shall go before his face ! Fellow-
citiZens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington lives.
This is a sublime statement of faith in an overruling Providence.
Nothing is so well calculated to make us lose head and heart as
affliction, while on the other hand it is very stimulative.
There is an old dead philosophic teaching which sought to
antagonize the living and experimental truths of Holy Writ by
claiming that God had created the world and had wound it up
like a clock, and that he had receded to some celestial attic to let
things go as they pleased without his interference or even concern.
It further held that God was not interested in the affairs of men,
small or great; that the ills of life never came under his notice; that
the tears of the orphan, the groans of the widow, the sighs of ihe
troubled, and the griefs of the afflicted and broken-hearted never-
reach his ear or enlist his sympathy; and that
"Prayer, the sublimest strains that reach
The Majesty on high,"
is useless save as a mental and spiritual gymnastic exercise, and
that the idea of special or even general providence is absurd and
3
*0 "what shall the harvest be ?
belittling to a great and Omnipotent Being. In vivid contrast to
this cold and heartless philosophy stands the warm and burning
words of the Scriptures: "Not a sparrow shall fall to the
ground," saith He that spake as never man spake, "without your
Heavenly Father," and "the very hairs of your head are all num¬
bered." Our Master assures us that God is not oblivious to the
cries of his children, and that so observant is he of the concerns of
our life that he is said to keep an unerring record of our deeds as
the basis of his final judgment.
To construct a theodicy vindicating the ways of God to man is
not only a difficult but dangerous undertaking; for "his way is in
the sea and his path in the great waters, and his footsteps are not
known." In the presence of many catastrophes in nature and
special providential acts in the lives of men and races, we stand
dumb, and exclaim with Ezekiel, "O L,ord God, thou knowest."
"We need not go far back in our own history to be confoundedin¬
deed almost every chapter of our history ends with the ever recur¬
ring question, "Wherefore?" I venture to assert, however, though
we may not be able to justify all the ways of God to man, that the
sorrowful chapter of our afflictions when held up before the light of
Revelation reveals between the lines the grand story of the divine
purpose, and when we look over the shoulders of the past, we can¬
not escape the conviction that God rules, and that
"His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower."
I pray you therefore, hear me while I speak of some of the bitter
things, but which I believe in the order of providence will have a
healthful moral effect upon us as individuals and as a race.
I. Aeeuctions are Disciplinary and Educative.
The growth of a nation or race is analagous to that of a man.
It must pass through the successive periods of childhood, youth
and manhood, and it must subject itself to the discipline peculiar to
the periods, each in its order, that it might be a fit heir to the bless¬
ings and fruits of the one following, and in order that it might
realize the possibilities of each to its fullest extent. If a child
does not learn obedience, implicit obedience in youth, he will never make
WHAT SHAl.lv THE) HARVEST BS ?
a respectable man. He must be handled with the iron hand of law
that this paramount lesson should be deeply engraved upon his
conscience. As he advances in years up to youth, the severity of
the law gives place to the power of example and the warnings
of conscience, and these in turn to the freedom of manhood to
shape one's life according to principle. There must come, however,
in that early period that discipline, yea, punishment, in order that
the fruits, priviliges and duties of manhood may be conscienciously
performed, fully realized and and soberly enjoyed.
Exactly analagous to this method is the growth and develop¬
ment of a nation or race. It must subject itself, or be subjected if
3rou please, in its infancy and youth to severe discipline and
unbending law. Every element that is calculated to impede its
progress or thwart the divine purpose in its existence, must be re¬
moved without sympathy. Violence, unrestraint, sensuality, and
disrespect for law must be beaten out of the racial system with the
iron hand of law. It must be taught a high regard for the suprem¬
acy of law as the embodiment of the will of God. After I,e-
onidas and his famous three hundred had laid down their lives be¬
tween the pass of thermopylae in the defense of their country, the
Greek poets were casting about for a fitting epitaph to chisel upon
their gravestones, Simonides fell upon this passage which has be¬
come classic in the history of military heroism: "Go, passenger,
tell the Lacedemonians, that we died here in obedience to their
laws." To bring a race or a nation up to this high conception of
law requires years of discipline and years of affliction.
In its youth the nation must be severe in its morals, strict in its
enforcement of law without dangerous compromises and quick in
its protection of virtue. In our day of so-called culture and
liberalism, we are disposed to laugh and sneer at the rigid morals
of the Puritans an hundred years ago. So sterling and rigid were
their morals that they were caricatured into the absurdity that it is
misdemeanor and crime for a man to kiss his wife on the Sabbath day.
But that severe morality and legal dispensation was necessary to
ground well the young republic upon the principles of the Bible
and to anchor it to the rock of the Decalogue. Liberty, the glory of
the Nineteenth Century and the boast of our American christian civiliza¬
tion becomes libertinism if it is not the child of discipline and of an un¬
compromising obedience to law. Puritanism was a necessary antece¬
dent to Republicanism. It was the great educating power that was
12
"WHAT SHAIJ, THE HARVEST BE?
moulding the character of the infant nation and preparing it for the
sturdy responsibilities of the 4th of July, 1776, and the 1st of Janu¬
ary, 1863. Had not Puritanism hardened the bone, toughened the
sinews and closely knitted the muscles of the young Republic, it
would not have lived to record the glorious achievements of these
two historic days, the mightiest days in the christian calendar since
the birth of Christ. It was the old pedagogue with rod in hand
that brought the nation up to a reverence for the Sabbath, and
obedience to God and to the knowledge of the brotherhood of man
in its most glorious assertion that " all men are equal. " This dis¬
ciplinary period with its afflictions, trials, wars, defeats, deaths and
successes, and withal its juridical morality was the necessary
process of' education, the preparatory school through which God
was training and leading the youthful nation that it might come to
the full realization of its majority among the nations of the world.
The history of Israel fully illustrates the same truth, viz., that dis¬
cipline and affliction are necessary to the production of serviceable
manhood. The severity of their afflictions in Egypt is said to have
made their cries rise to heaven. To the light in head and heart,
'these afflictions are irreconcilable with the sublime statement that,
"God is love." But the patient investigator, the student of history,
and the undefiled in heart, can see through the thick Egyptian
darkness that enveloped the Ancient Hebrews, the hand of God
■with the same brilliancy and distinctness, but not with equal trepid¬
ation, that the Great King and his sacriligious court saw it upon the
blazing wall of his Babylonian palace. That all these afflictions
-were for some great purpose, their subsequent history puts beyond
■dispute. These were the cleansing fires to purge them that they
might rise to the great and heroic King David, the man after God's
own heart, and the magnificence and splendor of Solomon. More-
- over, these fires were necessary to purify them, and to make them a
fit depositary for the Incarnate God, to give him to the world of
mankind that he might bring it back to God. Out of this race was
- to come the law-givers, prophets, teachers and the Great Teacher
for all other people upon divine truths, and a nation that is to be¬
come the teacher of other nations, must first learn through discipline
and affliction the truths it is to teach. The elementary truths—the
-unity an<J spirituality of God., the paramount importance of chastity
-in morals and the supremacy of law—though difficult to learn,
must impregnate the youthful atmosphere of that people that these
"WHAT SHAIvIv THE HARVEST BE?
*3
might become their practical conviction, their second nature and
their beliefs "pervading a whole people, penetrating all their daily-
life, leavening all their occupations, incorporated into their very
language."
Look at their departure from Egypt for Canaan. Why was it
that they wandered so long in the wilderness? They might have
reached Canaan in forty weeks, but instead of that, they were forty
years. One answer must be found in the fact that God wanted to
prepare them more thoroughly by a different process of education
for the rich land before them. They had not and could not learn
certain lessons in Egjrpt, hence God detains them in the wilderness
in order that he might prove and humble and discipline them with
hunger and thirst, sickness and war, defeat, captivity and death to
fit them for the inheritance that was before them. We must pre¬
sume, by reading backwards, that, had they gone directly into Ca¬
naan from the land of slavery, rude, crude, ignorant and rebellious,
they would have enjoyed and used its grand opportunities as much as
the unregenerate would enjoy heaven, were he suddenly translated
thither. The Wilderness, then, was a great and necessary school to
prepare the Hebrews in tbeir )^outh for the glories of their manhood
in Canaan. And when, in the later years of their life they showed
-that they were still lacking in the great truths of God and that they
could not learn this additional lesson of spirituality, God took ad¬
vantage of their growing ceremonialism and idolatry and drove
them into Persia to suffer again for seventy years. It was here in this
second period of slavery that they learned the great lesson of spirit¬
ual worship. "It was in fact in the captivity" says Bishop Temple,
"far from the temple and the sacrifices of the temple, that the Jew¬
ish people first learned that the spiritual part of worship could be
separated from the ceremonial, and that of the two the spiritual was
far the higher.''
Turn the pages of this story, my friends, and read any way you
choose, backwards or forwards, in the light of the subsequent events
in that people's life, and I cannot see how you can resist the conclu¬
sion that God sat as a refiner of silver over the burning caldron of
their sorrows and afflictions.
The school of adversity is a necessary school to educate us. ' 'The
good things of prosperity," says Seneca, "are to-be wished, but the
things that belong to adversity are to be admired," and a greater
than Seneca—Bacon—has said "that the virtue of prosperity is tem-
14
WHAT SHALL THU HARVEST B33 ?
perance, but the virtue of adversity is fortitude" and "prosperity
doth best discover vice, but adversit}' doth best discover virtue."
None can escape with the hope of making a readable history. It seems
to be in the very constitution of affairs that affliction is necessary to
bring out our virtues. All races before us that have made a history
worth reading, have had to suffer and to write it with the crimson
ink that came from their veins. The Asiatic Nations of ancient
history and the European Nation, likewise, all have been obliged to
pass through the fires of afflictions, discipline and punishment to
purfy their gold. The philosophic Greeks; the warlike Romans;
the sturdy Gauls; the savage Goths and Vandals; the romantic Picts
and Scots, the bloodthirsty Normans; the fiery and dashing French,
.and the unconquerable and versatile Anglo-Saxon, all have had to
suffer and endure hadships, privations, slavery in some form, and
afflictions and death that they might be prepared for the sober
duties in the manhood of their race.
I,et us now apply these same principles to our own social history
and adopt the same canons of interpretation and see the result.
Our story is long, bitter and withal instructive. Let me add, how¬
ever, at this point, that we have failed to grasp the lesson that Provi¬
dence designed to teach us if we have brought with us from that
past only bitterness and predjudice. I do not seek tostir up strife or
to intensify your prejudices, but I wish to study with you in the calm
and cool atmosphere of second thought our sad past and to fasten in
our minds some of its lessons. I grant you that it is next to the im¬
possible to study that history free from internal burnings, but we
must rise to that elevation where we will be able to examine our¬
selves with malice towards none. I do not advise that we should
forget slavery, but I call upon all to treasure its lessons, be free from
its bitterness and enter into the race of life. I have carefully read
and reread every page of our history before slavery, during slavery
and since slavery. Moreover, I have received from the lips of our
fathers, verbal testimony of the severity of the dispensation and the
bitterness of the ordeal. Moreover, I have studied the method
whereby we reached this country, and a more cruel, heartless, inhu¬
man and godless method cannot be imagined. The hooks of steel
were fastened into the most sacred parts of our human nature, and
we were dragged with the iron hand of a heathen Cyclop, called
christian civilization, deaf to the heart-rending wails of mothers at
the loss of children; unmoved in the presence of the tears of children
"WHAT SHAIvIv THE) HARVEST BE) ?
15
because their parents were so cruelly snatched away, and showing
its teeth in satanic glee at the sorrow and misery it wrought. This
were enough to make any people lose faith in the existence of God
$nd die in despair.
In this country the same tale of woe was repeated. My friends,
it has never been committed to paper, no man is equal to the task,
God only has preserved the record in his unfailing book. The
blood freezes in our veins and the heart is paralyzed as we
read the story from the lips and faces of the trustworthy and experi¬
enced. Now then it may be a thankless task for me to attempt to
turn your attention from the bitterness of the affliction to its lessons;
from its cruelty to the divine purpose. But I am possessed of the
opinion that God was in all of it, and under his hand some mighty
results will be brought out which could not have come had not this
experience been ours. I am not such an historical optimist as to
justify all the events of history disregarding the agencies that
brought them to pass, but I can discover through all the acts of
history, a providence working out his plans over and above and in
spite of man's wrath or " inhumanity to man."
I could not if I would, and I would not if I could, justify the slavery
and oppression of my people. There can scarcely be found to-day
one thoroughly sensible man in this country to do so upon sound
biblical grounds. I am willing to close the whole chapter forever
with the noble thought of Joseph to his brethren: "But as for
you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good."
We have to suffer yet more before we are thoroughly purged and
made the equal of our white brother. But we must treasure the
lessons and transmit them to the generations unborn. I do not
belong to that class of superficial men who thrive on the praise of
our people by telling them that they have accomplished as much as
our white brother. To talk thus is to babble ignorantly and to use
billingsgate to win the applause of the unwary. You must remem ¬
ber that the plane upon which our brother in white stands to-day,
has been reached by generations of slavery, toil and sacrifice, af¬
flictions, discipline and adversity; war, pestilence and death. And
this rich legacy of wealth, courage, fortitude, sagacity, learning, skill
and morality is bequeathed to every child of Anglo-Saxon blood. But
sad to relate, we have not such a legacy to bequeath to our children,
and even the wayfarer dare not assert it. Observe what I say. I
do not say that the elements of kindred strength are not found in
i6
WHAT SHAlvIy THE HARVEST BE?
us as individuals and as a race. Nor da I contend that the Anglo-
Saxon as a whole is thus richly endowed, and that the black man
as a whole is his inferior. I only assert that we have not as yet as
a whole measured up to him, and I state with equal modesty that
the embryonic strength of a giant are in his baby limbs.
I am a strong believer in the future destiny of greatness for my
peo-ple. I believe that God has kept hid from us, all what he has in
store for us, and that in the futuie, when the race shall have been
purged in the furnace of afflictions, and its virtues shall sparkle like
burnished silver, and it reveals the elements of character that God
can trust; and when it shall have divested itself of the filthy rags of
that black civilization, whose noxious stench is an offense in the
nostrils of God and of good men; yea, a thousand times, when the
carcasses of those who have come up from the land of slavery, and
upon which may be found the marks of the curse, and even when
this present generation, so worthless, helpless, and godless in sa
many cases, have all rotted in the wilderness of forgetfulness, and
a new generation shall spring forth whose feet shall keep pace with
the electric strides of this new civilization, whose face shall catch
the first rays of yon rising sun, and whose God shall be the "Lord of
Lords and King of Kings," then, and not till then, will the crown of
honor, glory, power, and victory adorn his sable brow.
My faith takes hold of this glorious and sublime future, with
the same certainty that it takes hold of its divine Lord. His¬
tory, Providence, reason, faith, and the Bible, all point to this,
consummation of our sufferings if we are true to Him that
calleth us. I care not for the carpiugs and whinings and'
pinings of short-sighted political harpies at the miseries of
the past, or even the present unsatisfactory condition of my
people. In spite of the woes and trials, burdens, afflictions,
persecutions, and deaths; in spite of the present indefinable condi¬
tion of half-slave, and half-free, of theoretical political equality but
actually subjected, ostracised, exorcised, and tyrranized political,
social and even religions condition; in spite of the farcical attempts,
in many cases to do him justice, but, the hidden intent to make
white right and not right right; in spite of his depressed condition
in wealth, his being discriminated against in business, social, poli¬
tical, and religions life; driven and banished to the outskirts of the
cities, or packed into filthy alleys not decent enough for cattle; in
spite of the fact that his own kin, in some cases is in league with the
WHAT SHAIX THE HARVEST BE?
17
enemy to throttle him and starve him and drive him into these
loathsome dens of poverty, disgrace and immorality; and what shall
I say more except to be that if this race, which has been in the
furnace of afflictions for these many years, and is even yet in the
same, will purge itself, and adhere rigidly to the commandments of
God and adopt the sentiment of Bismarc's famous declaration
before the German Parliament: "We Germans fear God and
nobody else;" that in spite of prejudicial enactments of legislatures
in the separate car laws of the South; white supremacy; in spite of
the biased interpretations of courts of justice, in spite of men—white
and black; devils and of hell.
"Tell me not in mournful numbers,
That our life is but an empty dream,"
For,
"Right is right since God is God;
And right the day shall win;
To doubt would be disloyalty
To falter would be sin."
Ah! friends, my faith in the ultimate triumph of the principle of
righteousness and in the wise management of affairs by an omnipo¬
tent, omniscient and loving God and Father of us all, is the bed rock
stone of my religious life; and my faith in the fact that God always
tells the truth is the cardinal doctrine of my ministerial life. This
saves me from infidelity. And when he says, "The Lord establish
thee an holy people unto himself as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou
shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God and walk in his
ways;" "but * * * if thou wilt not hearken
unto the voice of the Lord thy God;" * * *
"The Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples * * *
and thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb and a by-word
among all nations." When he says this, like the old German
Monk, I plant my feet upon these scriptures and say, "Here I
stand, I can do no other, God help me."
I could strengthen your faith still more by a running commen¬
tary upon the present actualities which were regarded as impossi¬
bilities in the past. So surprising are they and so convincing that
we must exclaim "what hath God wrought." Enough has been
said to show you that God rules, and to establish your conviction
4
i8
WHAT SHAI,!, THE) HARVEST BE) ?
that affliction is not necessarily a curse, but out of it the grandest
and most sublime future is possible to the individual and the race.
I repeat, my hope is fixed, and standing upon the top of this
present Mt. Nebo, and letting my eyes sweep through the dark
past up along the shores of the river we have crossed, and now into
the wilderness with our churches, school houses, trade schools, and
various christian and civilizing agencies, with faith in God, I am
certain that I see, through the thick darkness that envelopes us, the
gray rays of a new morn, and I hear the tramp of a new civilization
and the music of its avant courier joyfully shouting:
"There's a good time coming boys, a good time coming."
And rising in my meditations upon the afflictions of my fathers that
made them groan, I hear ths united voice of all nations that have
preceded us as the voice of many waters, saying: "For our light
affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh out for us a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory." And rising still higher, I
listen again, and the voice of prophecy rings with the distinctness of
a clarion note and with the sweetness of an angelic harp and the
melody of a heavenly lyre: "Thou hast lein among the pots,
yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver and her
feathers with yellow gold,''
III.
What Shall the Harvest Be in the Morals of
Our Families ?
"The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath
sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the L,ord thy God,
and walk in his ways."—De;uT., xxvm. 9.
Permit me at this juncture to file a disclaimer in my introductory-
remarks before I pass to the body of my thought. This series of
sermons makes no attempt to hold up the Negro in his weaknesses
and follies to the caricature and ridiculous gaze of the world. I cannot
be sensibly charged with a sinister intent, seeing I speak from the
inside to the inside. I am aware that our foes are numerous, and
that they hang over the dead past of the Negro, like starving car¬
rion birds searching always for corruption and putrefaction upon
which to satisfy their ghoulish appetites. I am also aware that
"they that be for us, are more than they that be against us," and
that many of them are not blind to our faults while they seek' 'to open
to us the path-way to all that is valuable." Moreover, I apprehend
that a large majority of the best thinking men and women of the
nation are anxious that we should see our real condition, "as others
see us,'' and admit candidly that these evils among us are dan¬
gerous, and then with faith in God and man, deal severely with our¬
selves. Neither do I claim in these sermons, that they are the ulti¬
matum upon the Negro situation, or the only solution of those vexa¬
tious problems that disturb our brain and heart. I believe that the
logical and indeed the chronological order in any great movement is
to study the situation thoroughly, and then seek for the solutions. I
call modestly for the ear of my people that I may tell them "the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
No people can thrive until it knows the evils that prey upon its
20
WHAT SHAIJ, THE HARVEST BE?
vitals, its past failures and short-comings, and tlie present obstacles
in its pathway to honor. The difficulties within must be fully known
before the first true step to greatness can be taken. A careful study
of the past, therefore, is our first duty; for bear in mind that the
roots of the present are buried in the past, and that events of to-day
are the effects of past causes. To remove any evil effect, we must
first destroy the cause, for the permanency of the effect depends upon
the permanency of the cause, hence our plain duty comes to the
surface, namely, study well the past, "whether it be good or whether
it be evil."
In the present discussion of our real condition, I seek to be free,
fair and full. I realize that there are extremes to be avoided in the
discussion of auy public question that affects our standing or will
mould our future. On the one hand we must avoid that ill-nature,
which is hypercritical and over captious; which sees no good in the
race, and claims that "the whole head is sick, and the whole heart
is faint; from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no
soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores;" that
evil spirit that sees in the future unconditional woe, disaster and
death. And on the other hand, that extreme good nature and super-
sensitiveness such as one finds in an aged grandparent blind not
only to the faults and foibles but to the iniquities of her grand¬
children. We repudiate the former as unjust, untrue and undeserv¬
ing serious detention in our thought; the latter, we treat with that
deference which extreme antiquity without the adjunct of intelli¬
gence deserves. "Between these two extremes there is a health¬
ful condition of mind that is generous in its appreciation of what is
meritorious discriminating between evil and good,'' and that can
follow the inner sequence of thought in its logical applications
to its fullest development; a mind that will recognize truth wher¬
ever found "on heathen or on christian ground; " a mind that will
by no means stultify itself or commit perjury or jugglery, but will
have no hesitation in applying the caustic when necessary, or
thrusting in the instrument when the exigencies of the case
demand it.
We are so accustomed to praise that we are disposed to
frown upon any man who uses terse, vigorous Anglo-Saxon in tell¬
ing us necessary but unsavory truths. But, like Micaiah, I am
content to leave to the charlatan heathen prophets of the stump the
unenviable task of prophesying sweet but lying words, while I give
WHAT SHAU, TH33 HARVEST BE?
rn3Tself unto the apparently unfriend^ duty of speaking "what tlie
I,ord saith unto me" in such language, so plain indeed I hope, that
the wayfarer need not err. I confess unto you that to preserve a
judicial equipoise in the discussion of grave questions among the
colored people is not an easy task. The personal racial element
is a disturbing element in any such discussion; add to this the un¬
friend^ attitude of so many of our foes eager for an unkind criti¬
cism and searching for all our weaknesses to magnify them before
the world without calling attention to our good parts, and beside
these, the disposition among us to close our eyes to our ills because
of the fact that they have been used against us to such disadvan¬
tage, and the difficulty of a judicial discussion becomes apparent.
But we realize that we must maintain a happy equilibrium between
mere criticism and the self complacent or congratulatory method.
My friends, it is not too severe an utterance to say that we
have not as yet, as a race, given serious thought to the business of
life. We have been befogged and befooled into the belief of the
most gigantic and ridiculously absurd whim that it was the business
of the state to make men by legislative enactments. Think of it,
the state decreeing that Sam Smith is the equal of John Brown ! I
know that you will cry "horrors!" I am aware that political
equality is within the gift of the state, and I am also aware of the
fact that our political teachers did not at first teach that political
equality simon pure is the only gift of the state. "Some one has
blundered " in this matter, for the poor Negro did believe, out and
out, that the right of franchise carried with it every form of equal¬
ity. When the smoke from the "cannons' brazen throats" had
cleared away from the battlefield, and there stood up in the tat¬
tered rags of the corrupt civilization the ruins of God's image
carved in ebony, had the victors, who were our friends, said to us:
*' Black Men ! by the issues of war your chains are knocked off,
and you are now freed or had they put it like the shaggy-maned
lion of Anacostia puts it in his own masterful way, ' You are
turned loose 1' Iyook within you, study yourselves, and with the
school house, the church and a ballot, though the odds are against
you, you must prove your manhood and take your place among
men. By industry, soberness, patience, moral character, you must
win your wa}' to the front rank of wealth, stability and recog¬
nition." But instead of that, he was led into a political slavery
that made him groan as bitterly as did his master's whip, and the
22
WHAT SHAlvI, THE! HARVEST BE?
salve that was used to bind up his wounds was labeled " Social and
equal rights by state enactments and forty acres and a mule."
Now I submit, that in all the history of mankind there has never
been a more consummate piece of knavery and hoodwinking prac¬
ticed upon an innocent and trusting people. I grant that the odds
were against us, and how severe let the experienced relate ; but I
hold that with a fair field, fair chance and correct teaching upon
the situation, we would have been better qualified today to cope in
the struggle of life. Let me say in passing as I close these
remarks, that we no longer intend to follow this " Jack-o-lantern"
phantom of equality by legislation, but will address ourselves to the
sturdier business of making character and obtaining equality in the
virtues of manliness. We have been diverted from the real duties
of life into the hope of reaching the summit by some sort of politi¬
cal jugglery. The a, b, c steps remain to be taken, and it is upon
these I come to address you today. I call upon you to look well
into our moral life and discover whether there be in it the element
of life or death. I enter this study with no forebodings, though
with painful interest. Let us therefore " to the weightier matters
of the law."
I. WHAT SHAW, THE HARVEST BE IN THE MLORAI^S OF OUR
FAMILIES ?
I Recognize, in the consideration of this subject, that all men of
the race are agreed. Upon questions of political economy, or
party affiliation, or the wisdom of economic and legislative meas¬
ures, there are almost as many differences as there are minds.
But, upon the paramount necessity of purity and high moral tone,
in the individual and the family, there is as perfect unanimity, as
divergence upon other topics. This is the one great subject of all
subjects, and it overshadows in importance, every economic phase
of our public life. We cannot go astray here in asserting that here
we find our success or defeat. The family is the workshop of civi¬
lization and it is equally its touchstone or most beautiful flower.
Drop out of our christian civilization the christian family and you
will have the play " Hamlet " with " Hamlet " left out. The fire¬
side makes or unmakes us. Whatever the family is, that the race
will be. It is a scientific truth that water cannot rise above its
WHAT SHAIX THIS HARVEST BE?
23
level, neither can a race rise above its fireside altars. The race or
the nation is the reflex of what the families of the race are. The
very facial lines and expressions of father and mother, in morals as
well as in pl^siognomy, are cut in the face of a race or nation, on a
larger scale. Like produces like. The home life of the family,
consciously or unconsciously, is determining the destiny and shaping
the character of the race or nation.
Dr. Smiles in his Essay on " Home Power," happily writes thus:
Home is the first and most important school of character. It is
there that every human being receives his best moral training or
worst; for it is there that he imbibes the principles of conduct
which endure through manhood and cease only with life. It is a
common saying, that "manners make the man," and there is a
second that "mind makes the man," but truer than either, is a
third, that "Home makes the man;" for home-training includes
not only manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the
home that the heart is opened, the habits formed, the intellect
awakened, and character moved for good and evil. From that
source, be it pure or impure, issue the principles and maxims that
govern society. Law itself is but the reflex of homes. The tiniest
bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterward
is sent forth to the world and becomes its public opinion; for nations
are gathered out of nurseries, and they who hold the leading strings
of children may even exercise a greater power than those who hold
the reins of government." The moral purity of home is of trans¬
cendent importance, for out of it are to come those streams which
are to bless or curse mankind.
A jstudy, however superficial, of our past in this connection is
humiliating though very instructive. To say that heretofore we have
had no real family life, and sacred fire-side altars, is to utter a tru¬
ism. Used not only as chattels for gain in the commercial markets,
but as tools and dupes for licentious and lecherous lusts, our poor
homes were in many cases the pits of infamy and the pest-houses
of corruption. How we survived with any virture left, God only
knows. But, thanks to Him, we came out of that den of immorality
with some trace of divinity left, and a few virtues, with which to
rebuild the ruined walls of our castle. I stamp as unjust and untrue
all those calumniations upon the Negro race as universally immoral
and depraved. He had the proclivity to immorality as other peo¬
ples, and by forte, and the power of example, he was dragged into
24
WHAT SHAU, THE HARVEST BE?
the depths by the Christian Anglo-Saxon. The proprieties of the
occasion, and the conventional rules of public speech, muzzle me to
a considerable extent in expressing the depth of the terpitude, and
the heinousness of the crime perpetrated against us in the most
sacred chamber outside of heaven. The evil to-day among us is
the black flower of the seed planted in our system. Our whole
moral system has been innoculated with the licentious virus of the
degrading, diabolical past; and the breath of many a home to-day
among us, is the breath of death due solely to the evil that was
done us in the past. In the articles upon the Negro by some church¬
men and statesmen in our day, all reference to the evil upon the
Negro himself, and the debauchery practiced upon him by his Chris¬
tian Master, is conspicuously evident by its absence. This is a
subject upon which they dare not trench. It is among the un¬
speakable things to-day. They deal in glittering generalities and
flaunt to the breeze our weaknesses as a mark of inferiority.
Be it known to you and to the American Republic, that we lay this
sin of overgrown immorality, leprous, degrading, ruinous and dam¬
nable in its unearthly proportions at the door of our christian white
brother. It has become the vulture of death preying upon our every
virtue. There was no virtue too sacred for their invasion; and
even shame, the virtue that Eve brought out of the garden, that vir¬
tue that belongs to heathen and christian alike, the mother of many
a grace, was mocked and insulted. Had slavery left untouched
even this virtue, it would have been an unmixed good, but because
it broke down this wall and invaded its sacred precincts, while
perhaps it was not an unmitigated evil, its good was in spite of itself.
I am anxious to record a testimony from within upon the cause of
our unhappy state. I realize that much has been said on this sub¬
ject by our friends, but even they are at a disadvantage in telling
the whole truth. I cannot be true to my people and allow them to
be villifled on every hand without raising an explanatory and dissent¬
ing voice. I desist just here, lest my hot blood rise up, unbalance
my judgment, and I burst over the bounds of propriety in describing
in the fullest the horrors of the past and make your cheek burn.
I am not here at this time to speak to the nation at large, upon
the evils under which we suffer, nor to inflame you over the crime
committed against us. I am here to study dispassionately our state
and condition to face the evil and how to regulate our lives and
habits in order to overcome the same and rise into the manliness
"WHAT SHAU, THE? HARVEST BB ?
25
and glory of a great and good people. Let us therefore, descend
from this height, in the contemplation of the v/rong done us, from
an elevation which is inimical to sober judgment and judicial
inquiry, to a plain where the air is not so rarefied and where our
blood is not so likely to burst out of our veins, and where we may
cooty and deliberately map out the road that leads to success and
triumph.
I now ask, What must be done? The answer is plain, let us
retrace our steps and build again the walls of our Jerusalem. We
must lay down certain old beaten principles which have stood the
test of time in the history of all great peoples, and by these we
must regulate our lives. First: In order to rise, we must develop
our moral internal resources. This is the first lesson that we ought
to learn ; it is the primer of knowledge, yea, the very alpha of life.
Internal resource is internal power, and internal power moves the
world. The internally dissolute, the intellectually incompetent in
mind and heart, cannot stan£ before the man whose conscience is
unsullied and whose wellspring of moral life is as clear as crystal.
So with a nation or race whose moral life is delicately poised upon
the principles of New Testament Ethics, pointing always to- The
Great North Star, and whose internal power lay not only in the
righteousness of its cause, but in personal purity and intelligence,
that people is unconquerable in war and unsurpassable in peace.
Yea, my friends, the stars placed side by side spell out the triumph
of the morally pure and the defeat of the morally impure. It is a
fearful admission, though a just one for us to make, that we had no
great stock of moral internal power. The reasons therefor are pat¬
ent to all. The truth stands whether we admit it or not, but it is
to our advantage to see and admit it.
We hear much speaking in our day of the political equality of
the Negro, and I am one that believes in agitation and I believe in
political equality. But concrete political equality cannot come at
this time under our present existing circumstances. History has
not a single illustration where a people devoid of moral internal re¬
source sufficient to demand and assert their rights, and to exercise
independently the functions of franchise, has had the concrete
actualities of political equality conferred in all of its blessings.
This is an hard saying I admit, and some of you might cry out
"treason." But to clarify my thought, let me repeat with greater
fulness and burn this truth upon your conscience. Political
5
26
WHAT SHAlvL THE HARVEST BE ?
equality has been held to be the panacea for all our woes. I fear
rather that it has been our pandora's box. But even though we
may have thought afterwards, it is better to think afterwards than
not at all. Hope is still left us. I am blind this day; not to facts but
to color; not to principle but to sentiment; not to the plain teach¬
ings of history superintended by an omniscient God, but to the
petulant desires and irrational and unhistorical whims of my own
people. And I dare not hush the voice of my conscience in an at¬
tempt to pervert the teachings of history and ultimately mislead
you for your praise.
Tell me that the undeveloped man in mind and heart, that
the man incapable of weighing his ballot and who has not
had time to build internal resources, that the man who is
unable to construct and construe those abstract and abstruse prin¬
ciples of law which is the will of God codified in the common sense
of mankind; tell me that the last comer upon the civilized stage of
action, with everything in the past against him, and with but one
generation of half-way so-called opportunities, with no capital
stock in mind, heart and history, was equally competent to appre¬
ciate and utilize this precious boon for his own advantage even,
as the developed man in brain and heart, the man in whose
interest not only the scientific principles of heredity and environ¬
ment both conspire, but also the multiplied institutions of a com¬
plex society; the one who has had the advantage to develop superior
■moral resources wrought out by education, discipline, heredity, and
long years of painstaking investigation; tell me that history records
the account of a solitary race, or tribe even, who could rightly use
in all its applications this great power without due preparation,
moral qualification, intellectual power with which to appreciate,
•defend and propel a righteous cause; and I had just as soon
believe you as to believe that a blacksmith beat out the heavens
above us with his hammer. This conclusion is irresistible from the
historical premises before our eyes. By any process of logical de¬
duction "a priori "or "a posteriori," with intellectual integrity, the
same unmixed logical sequence stares us in the face. Neither can
this be legitimately placed to our discredit, or held as proof posi¬
tive of our inferiority. To affirm that the boy is not equal to the
man in judgment and capacity, simply states an axiomatic truth
that adds nothing to the advantage or disadvantage of either.
Do not misunderstand and certainly do not misconstrue me. Po-
WHAT SHAIJ, THE HARVEST BE ?
27
litical equality does not solve our great problem. It must and will
come when, like the ripened fruit that falls to the ground, this weak
man has sufficient power to cotnmand as well as demand it; when we
are nearer the solution of our own problem; and that it will come, none
but fools deny. I am aware that we have had namby-pap and tinsel
oratory from the stump for twenty years, which has been ruinous in
its effects upon us. It is time that we receive the unvarnished truth
upon our real condition. The stump oratory has been highly punctu¬
ated with the catch phrases of an ad hominem argument calculated
simply to stir the feelings of the ignorant and to play the role of
vote-catcher. Our obstacles without have been sufficiently magni¬
fied, if not disproportionately so. But our weaknesses and difficulties
within have received scarcely any notice. Obstacles without are
the stepping stones for the resolute to glory, but weaknesses within
will humiliate us and defeat the purpose of God in our history.
"While I do not believe that whatever is, is right, I do believe, that
whatever is, ought to be known. "Know thyself" is the begin¬
ning of life, and nothing great can be accomplished without this
knowledge. I am speaking to my people, not in justification of
their ostracised and tyrannized condition, but in explanation of the
causes that produced this effect, and am directing them as to how
the causes should be removed. It is fool-hardy presumption and a
waste of energy to expect that this condition of affairs will be
remedied by the present method of indifference to our real need, or
to hope that by hook or crook these effects will be prevented while
the cause remains intact. Nothing of permanent value is done for
an individual, race, or nation by hook or crook. There are certain
divine laws legibly written in the structure of the physical, moral,
intellectual, social and governmental fabric, the keeping of which will
bring peace, security and prosperity. This I gather to be the only
safe way out of our present unsatisfying condition. I^et us then
give serious attention to the matter of developing internal moral
resources.
Second. The purity of the family.
My friends, here we find our life or death. Woman is the arch¬
angel of our families. She has, wrapt in her blithe movements,
graceful carriage; in the graces of her mind and heart, and the vir¬
tue and purity of her complex being, the power of another world.
She is both the fulcrum and lever of civilization, for God uses her
to make great men and to sow great ideas in their hearts. She must
28
WHAT SHALI, THE HARVEST BE?
be kept clean, and she mast keep herself clean at all hazards and at tvery
cost. My hot African blood burns with fervent heat, akin to"Afric's
sunny sands" beneath their torrid sun, when I read of the desecra¬
tion of any of our homes, and of the insult flung into the face of the
purity of our women by my brother in white; for this same white
brother is ready to lynch, or brutally and heartlessly murder my
silly-brother-in-black, for looking at a tenth rate cast white woman.
But when this colored man in his good senses deliberately proves
a traitor, renegade and suicide, and violates the purity and sanctity
of the homes of his race, I stand dumb in the presence of the mon¬
strous deed. The family is the spring of our life, and it must be
purified and made, divine; and if she who presides therein is pure,
there is nothing in heaven that will, and nothing under heaven or
in hell that can defeat or successfully thwart us. Tacitus .gives a
beautiful description of the sturdy virtue of the 6ld German woman
in contrast to the effeminacy and ludeness of the Roman women.
These were the ones that gave the German warrior the iron of his
blood that made him the unyielding and all-conquering foe of Rome.
Whenever the family life becomes corrupt, and woman is degraded
into a dupe, and the sacred altars cease to burn with the fire of ves¬
tal virgins in our homes, then that family, race or nation has begun
its march to the grave.
The history of Rome furnishes the best illustration of this
truth. As long as the Roman family was pure, and woman
was respected, loved and protected, kept clean and divine;
and marriage was honored, and virtue was elevated upon a
pedestal, as seen in the lives of many Roman matrons, Rome was
the city that sat upon the seven hills and ruled the world. The tread
of her mighty armies marching to war, shook the earth and made
the knees of her adversaries smite each other. The sight of her
implements of warfare, her breast-plates, helmets, greaves and
gauntlets; her shields, spears, lances; her battle axe, catapult and
battering ram, and her myriad arrows in war darkening the sun,
made her most stalwart enemy quiver and surrender. But when
she forgot her destiny and marriage was dragged into disgrace, and
women were so corrupt as to count their years by the number of
husbands they had; and when divorce was as frequent as marriages,
and the uhole social fabric was enervated and vitiated by the demoral¬
izing effect of adultery; when "it came to pass—a more horrible
symptom of demoralization can scarcelj'- be mentioned—that ladies
*WHAT SHAU, THE HARVEST BE?
29
of high birth enrolled themselves in the police register of common
prostitutes, in order that they might abandon themselves to the
anost wanton excesses, then it was that the swift messengers of
retributive vengeance, and death rapped at her gates and demanded
a surrender, and'Rome, the harlot of the western world, met a simi
lar fate to that of her eastern sister in corruptiou, and died to rise no-
more. The Scriptures are again verified in the history of this once
proud and mighty, but now dead people; when they say: "Righteous¬
ness exaltetha nation; but sin is a reproach to any people."
The past, and even the present, of our lives upon this subject, to
say the least, is shameful in the extreme. While it is true that the
causal roots may be easily traced to an outside agency, the fact still
remains, that the history of our family relation is the darkest chap¬
ter in our otherwise overburdened lives. It is the very spot in
which, crippled by our enemies and made plague ridden to-day, we
had most to lose and our enemyT knew that, to recover from the al¬
most fatal blow dealt us here by his own lustful and diabolical sin, it
would require the longest time. The evil is simply indescribable in
its direful affects upon us. But I am not discouraged in the least;
the careful student of history and he who believes in the existence of
God, also believes that every wrong will find its grave, every evil
meet its Waterloo and every possible form-of sin be overcome and
destroyed by its only and most powerful antidote, the purifying and
regenerative power of the Gospel. I would not mislead you, how¬
ever, into the belief that it is easily and quickly overcome. The
task is herculean in its weight and eternal in its consequences. It
will require generations of the most painstaking and puritanic disci¬
pline to cut the tap root and root up the outspreading roots and root¬
lets of this deadly, horrible Upas tree that corrupts and poisons all
the soil in which must grow our civic, social, moral and religious
virtues. And we must have no sentimentalism either, nor enter into
any dangerous and questionable compromises upon so vital a ques¬
tion.
We must learn that five purity of woman is the purity of the family,
and the purity of the family is the purity of race, and whosoever dares to
touch the character of a single girl or .is a foe to the purity of the family
is an enemy of the race and in league with hell. Our families must be
surrounded with the halo of sanctity. And he who assumes the re¬
sponsibility to enter within this sacred enclosure must be told with
prophetic directness and divine authority to "take off thy shoes from
3o
WHAT SHAI,!, THE) HARVEST BIJ ?'
off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground/''
Remember there is poison in our veins as a race, and could I get the
ear of the race throughout the country, I would thunder therein,
"purify or die." Our race must be brought up in morals, and the
Carthage of corruption, infamy and death must fall.
What is needed is that a sharp knife be thrust into this fetid can¬
cer to stay its deadly march. It should be severely removed and
all of its putrid, prurient pus be driven out our system by the truth
of God's law, and the wound cauterized and sewed up. Severe
you say, but upon the homeopathic principle, "like cures like."
I,et every family in the race open its Bible daily and be instructed
in the word of God, and let the fathers and mothers of the race
sink deebly into the young hearts the glory and excellence and re¬
ward of virtue in this world as well as in the next, and the shame,,
disgrace and eternal death and damnation of vice and immorality;
let the church and school house speak in no uncertain sound upon
this question, and it requires no prophet to discern the glory of the
future.
I do not believe that God has given the last touch of his
divine brush to human nature. I£ven the boastful Anglo-Saxon, so
rapacious, blood-thirsty and tyrannical, with its own moral sins,
hoary with age, has not yet reached the highest mark. It re¬
mains to be seen what God will do in ebony ; and it remains for us
to aid in the purifying and polishing of our natures, that the possi¬
ble triumph might be our possession, and the dream of our foremost
friends among the Anglo-Saxon, who are giving time, blood,
money, anxieties and labor to our future greatness, might become
the living reality of a new century. It remains for us to take hold
with might and main of this oppressing burden, and remove it from
the shoulders of the race. It is ours to wipe away this stain, and
place our race in the front rank of civilization, as '' terrible as an
army with banners.'' Then will be brought to pass the prophecy
to every nation that keepeth truth and purity: 1' Open ye the
gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter
in" and possess and enjoy all the rights, privileges, honors, glories
of a full, rounded, intelligent and morally excellent manhood.
IV.
The Duty of the Hour.
"Watch, ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong."—ist Cor.
xvi: 13.
The story is related of Boston's famous orator that on one occa¬
sion as he was about to attend an abolitionist meeting in Faneuil
Hall in the stormy days, just before he left his house, his wife
stretched out her hand and said " Wendell, don't shilly-shally, don't
shilly-shally;" and Wendell Phillips realizing, the importance of his
position and the trust of that loving wife did not shilly-shally. Study
his life, read his words and be convinced.
In our historic survey and philosophical study of the past, we
have spent much time in revealing to you the inner difficulties,
putting emphasis upon these as the most formidable and perhaps the
only true "hindrances to our progress; we have also devoted suffici¬
ent attention to the outer obstacles in our march of progress, to
impress upon you that the highest attainable standing comes only
through trials and afflictions, and to inspire you with a new conception
of these obstacles that they are not necessary evils but providential
accidents in the path to honor for any people. It is short-sighted¬
ness not to be able to see the silver lining on the cloud and to
understand the philosophy of affliction. The past is perhaps nau¬
seating, but in order to a full appreciation of the present, we must
have a clear knowledge of that which has gone before. No man is
capable of acting in the living present until he knows what the
forces are that produced it and what dangers of the past are to be
avoided. The danger to be avoided in a critical study of the past,
especially by those who were active agents in its episodes is
the intensification of prejudices and an intellectual narrowness which
deadens present exertion or circumscribes the mind in its growth.
In addition to this, the enslaved of one generation are the most
3*
WHAT SHAIX THE HARVEST BE?
liable to perpetuate those dangerous feelings imbibed in slavery,
from a brooding over their tyrranized condition which are inimical
to their peace in the days of peace. My friends, don't harp on.
slavery always; remember its lessons, study its truths, root out its
prejudices and pass on to the exacting present, with its aims and
surroundings and to the more glorious future with its magnificent
possibilities free to every man in the race of life. The present is
upon us ,and let us translate ourselves from the infernal regions of
slavery, prejudice and immorality to the elevated plain of life with,
its happy, busy, and pregnant callings and issues.
We must adapt ourselves to the changed environments and the
new conditions of a life of freedom. In an age of practical recogni¬
tion and theoretical equality, we must with vigour sieze upon every
agency of power, and by master strokes.force these abstract and
theoretical privileges and duties into the most stubborn, concrete
realities. Herein lay the secret power of success; that power which
wrests from apparent defeat and unwholesome circumstances the
laurels of victory. This is now the only possible way for us to write
a history worthy to be read. I doubt whether it will ever be our
duty or privilege to dip our pen into our veins and write our history
with crimson ink, but I am confident that in the days of peace,
it is our duty to practice the arts of peace and by patience, applica¬
tion, and by the arts of peace, it is ours to overcome the obstacles
and chip out our place and fill it. I have no sympathy with that
complaining spirit among us, that sees nothing but the prejudices
operating against us. L,et these prejudices be what they will or
may, it is ours to rise up and disprove every insinuation of inferiori¬
ty by pushing ourselves into the front ranks of men of character and
high standing. I have arisen to a broad conception of these things,
and I thank God for obstacles. When we are fifty years farther on
in the journey of life, and shall look back over the shoulder of those
years, we will then discover that these times were the inexplicable
designs of providence. We are not old enough to read the deep
lessons of these times.
A new kindgom is now upon us with its new methods and ideas,
and in order to become citizens of this kingdom, we must readjust
our lives and adopt its modes and learn its duties. Dr. Crummell,
a prince in good English and a giant in thought, expresses this idea
cleverly, in his late work,"Africa and America," when he says:
"There is an irresistable tendency in the Negro mind to dwell mor-
"WHAT SHALL THE HARVEST BE?
33
bidly and absorbingly upon the servile past. The urgent needs of the
present, the fast crowding and momentous interests of the future ap¬
pear to be forgotten. Duty for toda}^ hope for to-morrow, are ideas
which seem oblivious to even leading minds among us. I fear there
is a general incapacity to reach forward to a position and to the ac¬
quisitions which are in advance of our times. Enter the schools and
the theme which too generally occupies the youthful mind, is some
painful memory of servitude. Listen to the voices of the pulpit,
and how large a portion of its utterances are pitched in the same
doleful strain ! Send a man to Congress, and observe how seldom
possibly it is for him to speak upon any other topic than that of sla¬
very. * * * Nothing can be more hurtful for any
people than such a habit as this. For to dwell upon repulsive things,
to hang upon that which is dark, direful and saddening, tends first
of all to morbidity and degeneracy." It behoves us to shake off the
dust of the dead past from our feet and go on into the new activities of
the present. The day is rapidly approaching when the world will
cease having pity for you on account of your unhappy past, and will not
inquire as to whether you have been slave or not, but will ask the
legitimate question, "Who are you and what can you do?" It is
ours now to turn our attention to the sober duties of the hour. I
take it for granted that you remember the salient points in my for¬
mer sermon upon the past, and the lessons that come down to us.
I have changed positions to speak to you to day. I have not time to
dwell at great length upon the lines that present themselves to me,
and I would not claim that I have even referred to all of the leading
agencies necessary for our fullest development. I will content
myself with a bare mention of these I have in mind, with the hope
that some future day will afford me time to develop even all that is
in my mind upon this subject.
I. The Development oe Excellence in Individual
Character.
The air is rife, in fact stagnant with the ever recurring cry, how shall
we elevate the mass? how shall we bring up the Negro Race ? I do
not so much object to the cry as to the indisposition if not the wrong
methods applied to this race—elevation. And the chief reason why
the efforts of so many gatherings prove abortive is found in the fact
6
34
WHAT SHAIJ, THE HARVEST BE?
that the method pursued is unhistorical, unreasonable and illogical.
Even the most cursory glance at the present high standing of cer¬
tain nations and peoples of toda}' reveals two old stubborn facts in
race improvements namely; it is impossible to raise and educate a
race in the mass; second, all revolutions and improvements must
start with individuals.
This method is laborious but it is the only one that has succeeded.
The individual is the starting point and I might say the goal of race
effort. If it is our purpose to advance the interest of the race, it
must be intelligently directed and crystalize itself in strong charac¬
ters. A crying need among us is strong leadership, not so much
political leadership but that which is well rounded and thoroughly
based upon sound princiles. We must develop such men; not har¬
pies nor tricksters who live by lashing the waters of our prejudice;
not croakers or grumblers who are alw;ays complaining about the
hardness of the times and' are ever dissatisfied in that they them¬
selves have not larger offices. We do not need moral lepers or men'
whose religious life will not bear inspection. We need and must have
christian and educated leaders. Whether they go into politics, the
honored professions, business or the sacred calling; we need men,
and if we can not produce men we are doomed, but with
these we are in a position to begin the work of elevation, for
we will by means of these be able to direct our efforts to
the mass. "The prosperity of a country," says Martin Luther,
"depends, not on the abundance of its revenues, nor on the
strength of its fortifications; nor on the beauty of its buildings;
but it consists in the number of its cultivated citizens, in its
men of education, enlightenment and character; here are to be
found its true interests, its chief strength, its real power."
There is nothing in this world to be compared with strong, pure
intelligent character. The scriptures declare in plain words that
"God is no respecter of persons," but they tacitly affirm in spirit
and in unwritten words that God estimates good character. In this
city more than in any other the social life runs high, and there are
aristocracies of wealth, of social and governmental standing; aristoc¬
racies of color and of intelligence. Nearly all of these depend upon
adventitious circumstances or the accidents of life. There is but
one other aristocracy which I long to see organized viz : an aristoc¬
racy of character. If we must have aristocracy, let it be intelligent¬
ly founded upon excellent character or virtue. In this thought you
WHAT SHAU, THE HARVEST BE?
55
will observe that an old thought comes back to us. From any point
of discussion or study, the absence of this possession among us—1
healthful, virtuous, intelligent character—presents itself in worri¬
some aspects.
Another fact comes to view in this connection. We are approach¬
ing a day in which we will come into the closest contact and sharp¬
est competition with the Anglo-Saxon; and this competition is to
reach to all lines in the business, and to the political and religious
life of the nation. Our eyes are yet blind to these stirring
events which are to take place shortly. We have not awaked
from our Rip Van Winkle sleep to discover the mighty forces
that are playing about us and to hear the call of Providence
to fall in line with him. What is more valuable to contribute
to the nation than royal and excellent character? Such an
aggregation makes its life and determines its future. The famous
apothegm of Louis XIV—"I am the state," has an element of truth
in it.
We have become so familiar with the definition of "charac¬
ter" that a repetition is regarded as useless. But for the sake of
emphasis I venture to repeat. The word finds its root in a Greek
idea /'character" from the root "charasso" meaning "to sharpen,"
"to impress" "to stamp" or "cut out." "Did you ever watch a sculp¬
tor slowly fashion a human countenance ? It is not moulded at once.
It is not struck out in a single blow. It is painfully and laboriously
wrought. A thousand blows rough-cast it. Ten thousand chisels
polish and perfect it, put in the fine touches and bring out the fea¬
tures and expression. It is a work of time; but at last the full like¬
ness comes out and stands fixed in unchanging and solid marble.
So does man carve out his own moral excellence and character.
Every day he adds something to the work. A thousand acts of
thought and will and effort shape the features and expressions of the
soul. Habits of love, piety and truth; habits of falsehood, passion
or goodness, silently mould and fashion it, till at length it wears
the likeness of God or the image of a demon."
The god of the times has filled our eyes with his dust—the dust
of politics—and we have not been able to discriminate between the
essentials and the accidents of race-strength and power. Instead
of devoting our best energies in the development of that which cre¬
ates and controls power we have been mislead into the foolish hope
of jumping per sultem to the summit of power and triumph. The
36
WHAT SHAU, THE HARVEST BE ?
mythological fiction of Minerva's leap has no historic parallel in
the prosaic facts of today. Dig beneath the surface and read the
superscriptions upon the foundation stones of this modern fabric
chiseled there by a divine power and be convinced as to the truth
that personal excellence in character is the mightiest safeguard to
any nation. This stands as the gray dykes of Holland that beat
back the surgings of a mad sea. But the production of such char¬
acters must be the result of individual effort. This effort on our
part must be pushed in the teeth of untoward circumstances and
triumph over them in order to dissipate forever the doubt in the
minds of so many as to the impossibility of large character devel¬
opments among us.
The individual must dig out of himself the resources of power
and then must give himself to the work of lifting his race. He
must not be discouraged by oppositions, but he must become the
master of circumstances. " Instead of saying, that man is the
creature of circumstances, it would be nearer the mark to say that
he is the architect of circumstances. It is character which builds
an existence out of circumstances. Our strength is measured by
our plastic power. From the same materials, one man builds
palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas. Bricks
and mortar remain mortar and brick until the architect can make
them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the
same circumstances, one man rears *a stately edifice, while his
brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid ruins; the
block of.granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak,
becomes a stepping stone on the pathway of the strong." The
agencies are at our command, but we need the will and courage to
begin in earnest this personal reformation in character.
We must master our obstacles and not whine over them; take
apparent defeat and wrest out of it glorious victory. Our problem
is not "how shall we overcome the prejudices of the white man?"
Whether we ever overcome them or not is a matter of very small
concern. Our ears have been so accustomed to this sound that as
soon as any problem is mentioned, we unconsciously wait to hear
of the prejudice of the white man. How strange it is that so many
of us are paralysed instantly at the bare mention of the white man's
prejudices, and we lose head and heart for every endeavor. This
prejudice, we have conjured into a modern Mordecai sitting in the
gateway of our prosperity. My friends, this is child,s play. It is
WHAT SHAU, THE} HARVEST BI$ ?
37
true that the white man's prejudiae is a color prejudice. It is also
true that this prejudice cannot successfully defeat you if you are of
the right stripe and have the right sort of stuff in you. Stop arguing
with or pining in the presence of prejudice and rise up and do your
level best. You must win success, it is never given. The story is
told of Phil. Sheridan, that on one occasion, he found his army re¬
treating before General Early; the general in command said
excitedly to Sheridan: " O, sir, we are beaten." "No sir,"
quickly replied the dashing general, the fire of whose steed had
been drawn from his own breast, " You are beaten, but this army is
not beaten;" and sieving his army as Jupiter siezes his thunderbolts,
he dashed them upon the enemy with the fury of a giant and smote
them hip and thigh, and routed them horse, foot and dragoon. The
admonition comes to us, "show thyself a man."
Study this question in whatever light we may; take any phase of
it and apply to it the cold principles of unsympathetic logic; ana¬
lyze any one of its perplexing interogations, put into the scale its
every word and measure its possible outcome in the light of historj7-
and in the face of the facts of today in every race and the same
unmixed, unchanging answer meets you, personal excellence and
supreme t}ioral character in individuals and a race are the prophesy
of future greatness. And I take it that the christian pulpit ought
to set clearly before the people these essentials of greatness. The
pulpit stands alone and unique as an agenc3T for the elevation of the
people and its voice should ever be heard in unmistakable tones.
Some might find occasion to dissent because I dwell so severely upon
the short comings of the colored people to the exclusion of those of
the whites. My only answer to this semi-sensible complaint is,
" Not that I love Caesar less but that I love Rome more."
II.—Loyalty to the Race.
It is unnecessary that I dwell at length upon this thought, since it
has been developed so fully by public speakers upon many occasions,
and moreover because I desire more time to show to you some of the
lines of disloyalty and the standing evils of the same. I may in
passing, remark, that race disloyalty and prujudice are among the
fateful heritages from the past. We stand today, practically, Ish-
maelites, our hand against every man's and every man's hand against
ours. The process by which this state of affairs was brought about
was destructive and ruinous in morals as well as in social life.
The present indisposition to push forward the race in business en-
3*
what shall the harvest be?
terprises, if not positive antagonism to the success of such move¬
ments among us, is wholly due to our iniquitous training. We must
not cultivate the clannish spirit by any means, and yet we must re¬
cognize that until the race as a whole stands upon a better footing, the
favored few in wealth and intelligence will not command the respect
that is their due. Together we stand and together we fall. I once
heard an educated minister say that, "the colored people ought to try
to become like white people." My teeth fairly chattered. No ! ten
thousand times No ! Not like white people, for if God had wanted
hs to be like them, he would have made us white. Neither must
we be black. men, but MBN, though black.
Be true to your colors,, and do not try to draw away fro-m your poor
people as soon as God gives you wealth and learning. I would have
us to cultivate the spirit'of Moses as told us in the inspired word,
"By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called
the son of Pharoah's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction
with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a
season."
More on this anon.
III.—A broader Education.
No discussion pertaining to the elevation of the colored people
would be complete without a reference to this line of duty. We are
confronted with an enemy—ignorance—whose strength cannot easily
be overestimated, and there is no doubt but that the ignorance
among the colored people to day is not only a manace to the Re¬
public but a hindrance to their own true standing in the Nation.
The problem of the relation of the races has been under discussion
for many generations, and has sprung into new life since this people
has come upon the stage. It is an inviting though difficult one,. be¬
cause of its complications and of its possible good to follow showed
a proper adjustment be made. To-say that this problem in the
United States is momentous is to utter a common and oft-repeated
thought, nevertheless a true one. A problem is not solved until it
is correctly solved. And though its solution may lie deep beyond
the view of sporadic and prejudicial attempts or be obstructed and de¬
layed by passing difficulties and failures, still these difficulties and fail¬
ures do not forestall nor should they discourage thorough going inves¬
tigation; for it is the duty of every age to do its own thinking, solve
its own problems and adjust its relations. In the solution of any
question the conflict of opinion and prejudices is more prolonged and
"WHAT SHAU, THE HARVEST BE) ?
39
intense than that of arms, and it begets an antagonism which is a
menacing evil to a speedy and proper solution. And I believe that
the danger today to the Negro as a citizen is not his poverty nor
the prejudice of the whites, but his ignorance. More than this,
because of ignorance of himself, of the duties of citizenship, of the
value of suffrage and of the forces in civilization he does not enjoy
•as he otherwise would the privileges of suffrage; nor does he occupy
the position he ought to hold.
If the Negro is educated and fitted into the body politic, he will
"become the conservator of the peace and a sure bulwark of protec¬
tion to the Republican Institutions of the South when the flood
of European Communistic and Nihilistic elements shall be turned
thither. Let the nation view this question in whatever light it chooses,
the Negro will be its weal or its woe; if educated he will be its weal.,
if left ignorant, its woe, On the principle of self-protection or on the
faasis of utilitarian ethics his education is an absolute necessity to
the existence of a republican form of government. And when the fact
is added that in twenty years he will become a formidable numerical
portion of the south, the problem intensifies itself and wisdom sug¬
gests "what thou doest, do quickly." This is not only the nation's
concern but ours primarily.
I plead for a broad cosmopolitan education in all the elements of
strength and practical life; not simply classicism but publicism.
Any education that destroys the idenity of the personality is
false. The man must be drawn out and polished. "We need an
education which will fit us to enter the race of life and keep up and
•ahead, too, once in a while. "We must have high ideals in our life,
for the ideals makes the life. We have demonstrated our capacity
for learning, and I now call upon us to sweep through all fields of
scholarship, and carry our colors to the front rank. Aim high.
Look at the eagle. Lift your eye upon him as he rises in the cir¬
cumambient blue, beating the air with his proud pinions, stroke
after stroke, encircling the heavens with a steady movement, rising
higher and higher until his very eye sparkles with the blaze of the
sun. He is now in his glory, for he has reached his height, which
was to gaze at the sun.
Let us plume our pinions for these heigths in character, virtue,
moral excellence, family purity and intelligence, and standing erect
in the majesty and dignity of a rehabilitated nature and possessed of
all the virtnes of a christian character we shall become citizens of a
40
WHAT SHAlyly THIS HARVEST BE?
New Kingdom in a new century, and show to the world what God
hath wrought in ebony.
And then looking over the shoulders of past afflictions we will
realize in a new sense the fulness of that scripture which says: "Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart
of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love
him.''
Therefore, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men,
be strong."
"Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
I^earn to labor and to wait."'