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 . . . Olljrtstiau Solution . . . 
 
 j^wntott 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. H. P. DEWEY, D.D. 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY 
 ASSOCIATION, HELD IN DES MOINES, IOWA. 
 
 OCTOBER 16, 1904. 
 
RACE PROBLEMS 
 
 AND THEIR CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 
 
 SERMON 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. H. P. DEWEY, D.D. 
 
 Pastor of the Church of the Pilgrims, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE FIFTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
 MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION, HELD IN DES MOINES, IO\V> 
 October 16, 1904. 
 
 American Missionary Association, 
 
 287 Fourth Ave., New York, N. Y. 
 
 AMERICAN 
 
 1904. 
 
Race Problems and their Christian Solution 
 
 ‘‘And they went down both into the water.” — A cts viii : 38 
 
 It seems appropriate and opportune that the fifty-eighth annual 
 meeting of the American Missionary Association should be held in 
 this capital city, because of the historical relations existing between 
 the region hereabouts and three at least of the peoples to whom we 
 extend the helping hand. In the mighty struggle for the liberation 
 of the black man no state bore a more honorable record than the one 
 whose hospitality we are sharing to-night. Indeed, it is said, that at 
 the outset, when the call came for troops, the citizens here were indig- 
 nant because they were asked to contribute but one regiment. Again, 
 this commonwealth is a very rich portion of that vast territory ob- 
 tained from Napoleon for a song, the purchase of which is being 
 celebrated with no little self-congratulation in a neighboring city. If 
 it be asked what pertinence that fact has in this connection, let it be 
 remembered that the Highlanders — in the persons of their forefathers 
 — more than a hundred years ago, under the lead of the Boones and 
 the Seviers and the Clarkes, penetrating the goodly land bounded bv 
 the Cumberland and the Ohio and the Tennessee, and seeing the 
 advantage of unrestricted traffic through the Father of Waters, and 
 catching an alluring vision of the mighty domain beyond, were in a 
 sense the first promoters of the shrewd and gigantic sale. The only 
 
 3 
 
tarnish upon their sagacity and courage, the blemish also upon the Gov- 
 ernment which was behind them, was, that as the bargain was struck, 
 they were not very mindful of the rights of those who held the original 
 title to the land, — conduct quite in contrast with their later refusal to 
 swing the lash upon the back of a slave and with all their noble loyalty 
 to the Union cause. Again, as the wavering longitudinal line of Indian 
 tribes, stretching from Canada to the Gulf, was pushed from the 
 Atlantic far to the West, it was in this vicinity that the pursued made 
 one of their most valiant stands against the pursuers. When, there- 
 fore, we think of Keokuk, possessed of many manly qualities, fervent 
 and persuasive in speech, and loyal to the last to the hand that smote 
 him ; or when we think of Blackhawk, who, years after the vain strug- 
 gle had ceased, came yonder to Rock Island, and as he brooded over 
 the wrongs of his people and the cause that was lost forever, burst 
 into passionate tears ; or when we think of the Sacs and Foxes who 
 were persuaded from their homes in Illinois by dint of specious reason- 
 ing and cheap money and bad whiskey and the ever final and clinching 
 argument of the rifle, and taking their way to this western shore of the 
 Mississippi, threw themselves wearily and sadly upon the bosom of the 
 prairie, and exclaimed, “Iowa!” meaning “Here we find rest!” — when 
 we thus remind ourselves, it seems very fitting that the best friends 
 the Indian has to-day should gather here to counsel how they may help 
 him realize the hope long deferred and secure to him the higher rights 
 of his humanity. 
 
 As we contemplate the work of this Association, we find that it has 
 encouragements and embarrassments as does every other line of mis- 
 sionary endeavor we pursue. Tt is peculiarly true, however, that some 
 of the most signal encouragements and some of the most disheartening 
 embarrassments attending this work lie in the personal natures of the 
 beneficiaries. It is a distinct gain that in our endeavors for three of 
 these peoples we are met and aided at the outset by their own good 
 opinion of themselves. The Indian may recognize that his numbers 
 are diminishing; he may think of himself as caught in the eddy of an 
 on-rushing stream ; but he has no apology to make for being an Indian, 
 and if he is even compelled to feel that he is the last surviving remnant 
 of his race, the pride of a Pontiac or of a Tecumsch will still throb 
 
 4 
 
m his heart. The Chinaman pushes his way complacently, deter- 
 minedly, asking no favors, serene in the consciousness of the national 
 stability behind him which has remained unshaken for thousands of 
 years. The Highlander, American of Americans, has an inherent 
 strength of character like unto the strength of the hills among which 
 he lives, he has a spirit of freedom in his soul like unto the mountain 
 air which he breathes; when he is virtuous he is staunch and un- 
 bending like one of his Cumberland pines, and in his vices, even in his 
 moonshining, as one has described him. he is quite capable of “making 
 his own copper still, growing his own corn, and brewing his own 
 ‘licker.’ ” But the Negro presents a different type. Docile, submissive, 
 unassertive, held in the grip of the inertia of the long schooling of 
 dependency and improvidence, he finds it difficult to believe that his 
 soul, now reborn to a new lease of life but so long under the dominion 
 of others, is property of which he has entire control. Moreover, he pre- 
 sents an embarrassment, as we attempt to elevate him, which we meet 
 in our dealings with other races of color, but which in his case is 
 especially formidable. It lies in the force operating very widely to-day 
 and becoming more and more in evidence in many quarters of the globe. 
 We see it here in our southern states more flagrantly perhaps than else- 
 where : but there it is in South Africa, estranging the Briton and the 
 Boer from the Kaffir and the Zulu. There it is in the British Isles, 
 ever ready to disturb the balances between Celt and Saxon. There it 
 is in Western Europe, glaring in the eyes of Teuton and Latin as they 
 jealously keep vigil over Alsace and Lorraine. There it is in the 
 Balkan Peninsula, fanning the enmity between Slav and Turk and 
 giving an added complexity to the issues that portend from the situa- 
 tion charged with volcanic possibilities. And there it is in the Far East, 
 every hour bringing to whiter heat the ferocious passions and making 
 more deadly and awful in effect the terrible enginery employed, as 
 Causacian and Mongolian, blonde faced Russian and saffron faced Jap 
 continue in the titanic struggle that is horrifying the world. What- 
 ever arbitration may achieve through Hague tribunals and peace con- 
 gresses. thrftugh fervent petitions to presidents and mikados and czars, 
 attesting that the nobler soul of Christendom is thoroughly sick of 
 war. even though it secure the day when the chariot and battle bow shall 
 
 5 
 
entirely be cut off from Ephraim and Jerusalem, there will still remain 
 to it the more delicate and difficult task of reconciling the antipathies 
 which are nursed, if they are not created, by differing hues of com- 
 plexion and unlike qualities of blood. 
 
 Recognizing this element of seriousness, it is very natural that at 
 such a time as this we should address our thought particularly to that 
 department of our work which concerns the elevation of the Negro 
 people. It may be thought that in view of the many and divergent 
 views expressed, often exciting not a little of heated feeling, it would 
 be wise for the friends of this Association to go quietly about their 
 appointed business and keep their opinions to themselves. I can but 
 think, however, that it is one of the happy auguries of the time that 
 so much is being said and said so openly and without reserve. 
 
 Nor could the question be remanded to silence, if we would thus 
 dispose of it. The Negro is here to stay. However much others, more 
 favored at the top of the social ladder, may incline to race suicide, he 
 evinces no tendency to fall into that sin. It is true that he increases 
 less rapidly than does his white neighbor, but this is because of his 
 larger death rate ; and when, heeding the advice of President Eliot, 
 given the other day at a colored men’s dinner, he raises up from his 
 own number skilled physicians, this disproportion will be reversed. 
 He is more and more of a factor in the industrial situation, an in- 
 creasingly disturbing element in the relations between capital and labor ; 
 however restricted he may be in franchise, he enters, sentimentally at 
 least, as a power into every presidential contest ; and morally, his 50 
 per cent, of ignorance and superstition is a very sensible drag upon the 
 skirts of the Republic. 
 
 One of the gratifying phases of the case is that the Negro himself is 
 'at last stating a solution of the problem. Of all the spectacles in the 
 world to-day, of all the scenes in history, there is nothing more dra- 
 matically interesting than the picture of the colored race making the 
 discovery of its long buried self. For a while dazed and confused by 
 the liberty into which it was thrust and which it knew not how to use, 
 stupefied by the anodyne of bondage still lingering in its blood, it now 
 is beginning to stir from its lethargy and to emerge from its bewilder- 
 ment. Wendell Phillips looked upon the arms of a southern state, 
 
 6 
 
representing a Negro asleep upon a* bale of cotton, and after a mo- 
 ment of solemn pondering, he asked : “And what will the people do 
 when the Xegro wakes up?” At last, the dawn is beginning to break, 
 and he who has been asleep, or groping blindly in the night, is coming 
 forth into the morning. The light of the new day is upon his face 
 and its cheer is in his heart. 
 
 It is a picture infinitely pathetic. Someone hearing a singer of rare 
 natural power, remarked: "Xow, if she could only be made to suffer!” 
 The soul quality sometimes missing in a musical artist is seldom absent 
 in the life melodies and harmonies of the Xegro people. The reason 
 that their orators often speak with such consummate and overwhelm- 
 ing eloquence, is not, I think, that the Great Bestower has allowed 
 them a special portion of the divine afflatus, but rather that they utter 
 themselves, often almost unconsciously, out of a great experience. The 
 plaintive note heard in the voice is, as Dunbar so touchingly says, the 
 song of a bird who knows what it is to beat his wings against the bars. 
 Xo people so well understand the meaning of the cross, unless it be 
 those exiles wandering over the face of the earth whose fathers nine- 
 teen centuries ago gave the symbol to the world, unwittingly converting 
 it from a sign of shame into an emblem of glory. Think what it 
 means to attempt to rise in the world without any inspiring traditions, 
 without any family lineage to hold one up to a standard, without any 
 portraits of ancestors looking down upon one in cheer and admonition. 
 The Indian remembers the valor of many a chieftain ; the Chinaman 
 can never forget Confucius : the Highlander feels the inspiration of 
 King’s Mountain ; the Xegro has the knowledge that his roots are 
 struck deep in age long ignominy. Your white boy sets out upon his 
 career with a hundred voices to hail and urge him on. His race is 
 with him, bearing him up in its sympathies and in its achievements as 
 the ocean lifts the ship upon its bosom. The Xegro boy begins his 
 ascent with his race, as President Tucker once said in this presence, a 
 drag upon him: yes. the weight of the whole mass he must lift. If 
 he finds some voices to encourage him, there are more voices to sneer 
 and bid him keep his place. All the way up there are those who con- 
 test his right to rise: and he knows that if at last he shall succeed 
 in standing upon the higher ranges of attainment he will be in an 
 
 7 
 
atmosphere that is chilly indeed. I shall not forget the statement of 
 a Negro lady of much refinement, that her education had separated 
 her from congenial association with those of her own race who had not 
 enjoyed her advantages, and on the other hand had gained her no en 
 trance into the circles of those white people whose elevated tastes she 
 shared. Is there not a cross in such loneliness as that? But if there 
 is dignity in bearing the cross ; if it is true, as the Apocalypse declares 
 in the seven-fold refrain, that the better rewards of life are designed 
 for those who overcome, then surely we ought to take off our hats to 
 these sturdy ones who against unparalleled odds have pushed their 
 way ; who have climbed often with bleeding fingers and bruised feet, 
 and who have attested in their victories against severest competitions 
 those lines of Kipling which I have somewhere seen quoted in their 
 behalf : 
 
 “But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth, 
 
 When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the 
 ends of the earth.” 
 
 An unseemly brawl occurred in Brooklyn the other day in the gray 
 of the morning before the policemen were astir. An unoffending Negro 
 was set upon by three or four ruffianly white men, but as the onslaught 
 proceeded one of the attacking party seemed to be moved by the spirit 
 of fair play, and calling a halt, he advised that they deal one at a time 
 with their victim. When this order of battle was established, the Negro 
 quickly put his assailants to rout. That suggests the ability to improve 
 the “fair chance” which members of the colored race frequently exhibit. 
 And just what does the “fair chance” mean? It signifies, of course, the 
 colored man’s liberty to be himself. If he can manoeuvre the farm, 
 dig the mines and run the engine; if he can plead the case and treat 
 the sick; if he can mould his thoughts in forms of exquisite beauty 
 and real power in verse or on canvas; if he can be the statesman and 
 the leader of men — then there must be no hindrance placed to the exer- 
 cise of his talents. Thus he will be able to hold up his head and to 
 dictate his terms, because thus he will have made himself indispensable. 
 But liberty, which civilization is quite ready — theoretically, at least — 
 
 8 
 
to accord almost everywhere to-day, involves something else which 
 civilization is often more reluctant to grant. That something is 
 equality. 
 
 Industrial equality — the opportunity to work on fair terms and to 
 enjoy to the fullest the harvest of one’s labor. 
 
 Educational equality — the opportunity to learn and to appropriate 
 the truth which belongs, like the air, to all. It is to be lamented that 
 some of our constituency are beginning to waiver as to the expediency 
 of giving the Negro the higher education. 1 am reminded of a dis- 
 cussion which occurred recently in a certain professor's home in which 
 there were two daughters. The question was whether girls should be 
 sent to college. One daughter had already graduated. The other was 
 a possible sub-freshman. If you could know, it was said, what your 
 Sfirl is to do, whether she is to be a breadwinner or to become the mis- 
 tress of a home, you might better tell how to advise her. In the per- 
 plexities of the situation, the professor was of the opinion that inasmuch 
 as you cannot predict the future for your daughter, you must do the 
 very best thing possible for her and equip her in the most elaborate 
 fashion that she may be well prepared for every emergency. Who can 
 tell? She may adopt the state of matrimony, but even then, it is just 
 possible, that she may need a very large fund of knowledge to supple- 
 ment the deficiencies of her spouse. We must all agree with the distin- 
 guished and wise president of Harvard, that there is no educational 
 advantage demanded for the white man which is not equally demanded 
 for the Negro; that if we are to have good primary schools and good 
 grammer schools in either Massachusetts or Alabama, we must have 
 good normal schools and good colleges in which to train the necessary 
 teachers. 
 
 Once more, political equality — the opportunity to register, to vote, 
 to make laws, and to administer laws. The Negro cannot justly be 
 debarred from any privilege of citizenship, even from the emoluments 
 of office. We are under the flag : let us take the logic of the ensign. If 
 we do not like that logic, then let us move to Europe. We are committed 
 to the principle of self government, and one of the cardinal elements of 
 that principle is that the governed shall, if they are capable, have the 
 right to become the governors. Our honored Chief Executive is the 
 
 9 
 
exponent of the only righteous creed, when he declares that he cannot 
 take the position of closing the door of hope — which he says is the 
 door of opportunity — to any man on account of his race or color. 
 
 Yet, once more, social equality; and there is a phantom of dread 
 haunting that suggestion which is wholly fictional. Social equality in 
 the truest meaning of the term means simply that all sorts and condi- 
 tions of people in this country must live side by side in a spirit of 
 mutual helpfulness and good will. It does not mean amalgamation of 
 the colored race and the white race. That never can be. The eighty- 
 five per cent, of the colored population who have sable countenances 
 will not incline, as time goes on, to transmit more pallor to the faces 
 of their offspring. They will more and more take a pride in the African 
 complexion, which, with the Prince of Morocco pleading his suit before 
 Portia, they will deem “the shadowed livery of the burnished sun.’’ 
 There will be no intrusion of the black man into the privacies of the 
 white man. There will be no obliteration of the classifications of 
 society which lie in the nature of things. I can but think that with the 
 lapse of years the Negro will become more and more distinct. He will 
 be segregated by his own choice. He will desire his own hotels, his 
 own railway cars — and he will have diner and Pullman attached — his 
 own theatres, and his own schools. But what we contend is, that no 
 legislature shall prevent white children and black children from study- 
 ing together under the same roof if they elect so to do, and that there 
 shall be no criticism from any source if we choose to ask any man of 
 whatsoever color or origin to sit at our table, or to sleep in our spare 
 bed-room. We cannot legislate the social relationships. They are 
 determined by influences more subtle and delicate than those exerted 
 by the state. They are governed by other forces than the volition of 
 man. They are fixed by the laws of nature and of nature’s God. And 
 who is the man who is at once the truest aristocrat and the truest 
 democrat? Is he the one whose distinguishing feature is that he has 
 culture or wealth or family connections ? No. Rather is he the one 
 who, with or without these accessories, is possessed of the sane mind 
 and the large heart and the honorable conscience and the resolute will 
 Sooner or later that man must find every door opening to him : he 
 must be laureled and crowned without regard to the accident of his 
 
 io 
 
beginnings or of his complexion, for as a Negro singer with prophetic 
 vision has declared : 
 
 “The man who is strong to fight his fight, 
 And whose will no front can daunt, 
 
 If the truth be truth, and the right be right, 
 Is the man whom the ages want.” 
 
 This suggests the ideal some day to be realized, the blessed democ- 
 racy of the future. We have to confess that the happy consummation 
 seems yet far away. Meanwhile, we should evince the utmost patience 
 and sympathy toward those who do not think that the ideal ever can 
 be attained, who believe that it is wholly impracticable and visionary, 
 and who are animated bv a prejudice which has no place in our hearts. 
 Our colored friend, Mr. Moore, tells of losing his hat by theft, while 
 on a railway train, and of being insulted by a white news agent who 
 hailed him as “Old Baldhead.” Let our brother be comforted by re- 
 flecting that he is in a worthy line of succession. The incident brings 
 to mind a report from a Sunday school teacher who recently asked me 
 to give the correct interpretation of the term, “little children,” as 
 applied to those juveniles who, with a like salutation railed at the 
 prophet Elisha in the ancient city of Bethel. The teacher said that a 
 certain lesson paper had declared that the term should be changed to 
 “hoodlums," but that the class had expressed the judgment that such 
 rendering seemed a little over drastic and that the punishment which 
 fell upon the misguided youth was rather too severe. Certain it is, that 
 we should exercise the largest charity toward those who see the situa- 
 tion from their own close and strained relations to it. The problem 
 is one to be reasoned over, not to be fought over. In all our attitude 
 we should make it evident that we feel more than charity, that we have 
 with our southern neighbors a veritable identity of interest. 
 
 Let us show in all the efforts we put forth to elevate an unprivi- 
 leged race, that we are willing to take the brunt of their condition ; and 
 not only so, but that we are resolved to stand, both with the black man 
 and with his white neighbor; until together they are lifted out of 
 
their trouble, not forgetting the while that we also are of like passions 
 with them. 
 
 De Tocqueville tells an incident in his visit made to this country 
 seventy-five years ago, which seems almost like a provision of the work 
 of the American Missionary Association. He drew nigh to a plan- 
 tation in Florida, and as he sat down on the banks of a creek, he saw 
 three children approach One was an Indian, adorned with barbaric 
 ornaments ; the second was a negress ; and the third was a white girl, 
 the daughter of the planter. The Indian freely and boldly, yet tenderly, 
 caressed the white child ; but the negress sat at her feet timidly, and 
 gently trying to gain her notice and excite her favor, while the little 
 mistress, evidently conscious of her superior position, accepted and 
 reciprocated the attentions of both her companions with every mark of 
 fond attachment. Thus three races, says the writer, evinced their re- 
 spective characteristics and conditions of life, and he feels sure that the 
 interplay of genuine affection among the trio is the force that must be 
 relied upon to inspire and seal a lasting and happy bond among three 
 diverse peoples destined to live in proximity to one another. 
 
 Yes, but where shall this affection have its rise? What shall be the 
 influence to create and foster and secure it? Can education be relied 
 upon to establish such friendliness? We cannot forget that it was when 
 France was in a high stage of literary development and sedulous in 
 nurturing all the arts and politeness that the best compliment a great 
 English statesman could pay her was that her vices lost half their 
 viciousness by losing half their grossness. Socrates had a fine notion 
 that if men could only know enough they would be certain to follow 
 the path of wisdom and honor, and Aristotle believed that if sufficient 
 arithmetic could be crowded into a boy’s head he would keep to the 
 line of orderly virtue. Rut the centuries have quite thoroughly dis- 
 proved these assurances of the ancient sages. Or can we depend upon 
 commercial and industrial facilities to bring in the day of light and 
 peace ? When did trade even humanize a people ? Did it soften and 
 ennoble the Indians, when the Dutch, led by its impulses, prosecuted 
 their dealings with the red men on Manhattan Island? Did the 
 Phoenicians, those talented and indefatigable buyers and sellers of 
 olden times, improve in character under its stimulus? Nay, as George 
 
 12 
 
Adam Smith has pointed out, their merchant ships went far and wide 
 upon the seas while they as a people became so perfidious and corrupt 
 th^it Isaiah could only adequately stigmatize them by that name which 
 denotes the basest traffic in virtue. Trade, left to its own instinct is 
 but the fierce struggle for existence, the attempt to give survival to 
 the strongest, the doctrine that might makes right. 
 
 Or shall we look to political doctrines and expedients to sanctify us 
 and heal every wound? I was somewhat sobered in my optimism 
 recently, to hear one of the foremost diplomatists of the day declare 
 that political life in America is more corrupt than it was twenty-five 
 years ago, and to hear him bring forth as a witness to his statement 
 that it would soon be impossible, if it were not already so, for any man 
 not possessed of great wealth and ready to spend it lavishly for the 
 furtherance of his ambition to aspire to a seat in the United States 
 Senate. No, all these agencies which are efficient instruments in 
 bringing in the fraternal kingdom must utterly fail, must be as dan- 
 gerous weapons in the hands of children or mad men, if they are 
 not animated and directed and controlled by the deeper impulses of 
 our faith. The truth most requiring to be recognized on all sides just 
 now is rung out in clarion notes by grim old Tolstoi as he presents 
 his awful indictment against his people for the war that is cursing 
 them : “The evil from which men of our time are suffering is produced 
 by the fact that the majority live without that which alone affords a 
 rational guidance for human activity — without religion." 
 
 This may seem a commonplace, but there is no truth that we have 
 more forgotten of late, or, at least, so failed to utilize. Can there be 
 any other explanation of the apathy prevailing in the Christian Church ? 
 If zeal could be generated by splendid equipments of ecclesiastical and 
 religious machinery, then we ought to be fairly ablaze with enthusiasm. 
 What we are needing above all else is the recovery of some form of 
 real, religious experience. The revival that we should wait for more 
 eagerly than they who wait for the morning is the revival to be her- 
 alded by the spiritual note. 
 
 It is fairly claimed that much of what the church counsels and 
 enjoins is readily accepted by the world, that what we call the ethics of 
 Christianity is sanctioned by multitudes of people who are never found 
 
 13 
 
in the assemblage of the saints. This being so, we may not expect to 
 make a very persuasive appeal in any novelties we have to offer in the 
 humanities and fraternities. We ministers tell our people to be honest, 
 but they find a man next day in business who never darkens the door of 
 the sanctuary, and he is just as earnest in urging the obligation and nobly 
 illustrates it. We tell them to be kind and merciful, but there are many 
 who are indifferent to the house of God, who are quite as obedient to 
 the Golden Rule as are any of those who frequent the place of prayer. 
 We tell them to be pure, but all more decent society exalts the canons 
 of the seventh commandment, and though it does not always ostracise 
 the offender, in its heart of hearts it visits upon him the ban of dis- 
 grace. We contend, of course, that these virtues so widely disseminated, 
 these Christian amenities so commonly appropriated, without due credit 
 being given, are the outspring of the Christian church and of the Chris- 
 tian gospel, and that men everywhere have from these sources their 
 main impulse to usefulness and goodness, taking it from an environ- 
 ment bearing innumerable Christian marks, from an atmosphere 
 charged with Christian truth and breathed in with every breath. But 
 when this is allowed, let us not forget what it is in the Christian church 
 and in the Christian gospel that is the real spring of these blessings. 
 Those first disciples did not deliberately sit down and resolve to do 
 honor and justice and walk humbly before Cod and men. Their 
 inspiration to the Christian career of personal rectitude and benevolent 
 service was not found in the Sermon on the Mount, but in the farewell 
 address of their Master. Their initiation into the Lord’s work was 
 through a great religious experience. And that is the thing to be 
 coveted to-day ; the thing that must constitute the uniqueness of the 
 church if it is to have any uniqueness; that must he its monopoly upon 
 which none can infringe ; that must be the magnetism of its appeal. 
 As a constituency at home, as an official administering board, as actual 
 laborers in the field, we must bring ourselves to believe, and make the 
 conviction thrill in all our redemptive machinery, that in our midst, 
 accompanying us at every step, guiding us into the truth, knitting us 
 together in fraternal ties, taking the things of Christ and showing them 
 unto us, yes, and bringing Him actually nigh unto us, is a personal, 
 divine Spirit whose presence we can feel, whose power we can know. 
 
 14 
 
W’e read in the book of the Acts of a man who sat in his chariot 
 reading a book which he could not understand. Significant it was that 
 the passage over which he pondered and which fascinated while it 
 baffled him was the graphic picture of one who was likened to a lamb 
 led to the slaughter and to a sheep dumb before the shearers, for this 
 man though high in authority in the service of his queen belonged to 
 a discredited race. And Philip, the Evangelist, drew nigh and lent his 
 aid to the stranger. It is possible that the preacher’s interest was the 
 greater, because he was reminded of a certain noble ancestor of this 
 lonely student, who rescued Jeremiah from the pit. The preacher ex- 
 plained the mystery of the passage, and the inquirer, as the logic of it 
 dawned upon his mind, seized upon the blessed inference, and with a 
 new hope burning within him, he said: “See, here is water; what doth 
 hinder me to be baptized ?” So the two went down into the river — the 
 light skinned Greek and the dusky Ethiopian, the Negro — one in their 
 consciousness of sin, one in their recognized need of cleansing, one in 
 their reliance upon a power more than human, one in the baptism of the 
 Spirit. Let us of this great American Missionary Association be 
 mediators of that baptism, that the peoples whom we seek to help, red, 
 yellow, black and white, may, together with us, be brought unto the 
 stature of that collective man whom the great Apostle describes, in 
 whom there shall be neither Greek, nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond 
 nor free, but Christ shall be all and in all. 
 
 i5