frantic and convulsive agitation, political or religious. The revolution of which I speak must find its primal elements in qualities, latent though they be, which reside in the people who need this revolution, and which can be drawn out of them, and thus secure form and reality.

[Pg 21]

The basis of this revolution must be character. [Pg 22]That is the rock on which our whole race in America is to be built up. Our leaders are to address themselves to this main and master endeavor—viz., to free them from false ideas and injurious habits, to persuade them to the adoption of correct principles, to lift them up to superior modes of living, and so bring forth, as permanent factors in their life, the qualities of thrift, order, virtue, and manliness.

[Pg 22]

But who are the agents to bring about this grand change in the Negro race? Remember, just here, that all effectual revolutions in a people must be racial in their characteristics. You can't take the essential qualities of one people and transfuse them into the blood of another people, and make them indigenous to them. The primal qualities of a family, a race, a nation are heritable qualities. They abide in their constitution. They remain, notwithstanding the conditions and the changes of rudeness, slavery, civilizations, and enlightenment. It is a law of moral elevation that you must allow the constant abidance of the essential elements of a people's character; therefore when I put the query, Who shall be the agent to raise and elevate our race to a higher plane of being? the answer will at once flash upon your intelligence. It is to be effected by the scholars and philanthropists which come forth in these days from the schools. They are the people to transform, stimulate, and uplift, because it is a work of intelligence; it is a work [Pg 23]which demands historic facts and their application to new circumstances.

[Pg 23]

But these reformers must not be mere scholars. The intellect is to be used, but mainly as the vehicle of mind and spiritual aims, and hence these men must needs be both scholars and philanthropists.

Allow me, in the conclusion of this article, to express the hope that He who holds the hearts of all men will give you the spirit to forget yourselves, and live for the good of man and the glory of God. Such a field and opportunity are graciously opened to you in the conditions and needs of our race in this country. May you and I be equal to them!

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