Fifty Years of Freedomwith matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United States
we undertake to do, our efficiency will count for but little. If people can't depend on us; if our word counts for nothing; if we are deficient in a sense of obligation; if responsibilities weigh lightly upon us, we will be sure to lose the confidence of others, and will be sure also to lose their patronage. Even the inefficient man who can be depended upon will be preferred to the efficient man upon whom no dependence can be put. The two things must go together, reliability and efficiency, if efficiency is to be of any real advantage. This is a point which we need particularly to lay to heart, and to keep before us in the training of the young. Unfortunately there is considerable ground for just complaint against a large percentage of the race just here. It is a serious defect, and one that ought to be remedied, that ought to claim our immediate and earnest attention.

10(4). It is well for us to impress ourselves with the importance, with the transcendent importance of character. Character is the foundation upon which everything else must rest if it is to endure, if it is to be of any permanent value in the elevation of the race. There must be a sound moral basis. In the heart of the race there must be implanted the great principles of morality. The race must not only be taught, but must accept, must be governed by sentiments of justice, of veracity, of purity, of honesty. It must make up its mind to square its life by the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. There is nothing that can compensate for, or take the place of a sturdy, upright character. It isn't something which it would simply be well for us to possess, which it would be to our advantage to possess; it is absolutely indispensable. There is no future for us, no honorable future for us, without it. This is the way we must feel; this is the way we must make our children feel. Character, high character, is not something which we may or may not set before us as we face the future, as we enter upon the second half of the century of freedom; but something which we must set definitely before us as of transcendent importance. There is no option left us if we have any regard to our highest and best interest, and the best interest of those who are to follow us. If the moral atmosphere in which the race lives and moves and has its being is not kept pure and healthful and invigorating it can never hope to become a strong, virile, self-respecting race, or a race that will be likely to command much respect from others. The race has, be it said to its credit, all along attached some importance to character, but the emphasis which it puts upon it must steadily increase. We must come, more and more, to realize the fact that while knowledge is 
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