Light Ahead for the Negro
woman? Winding up that great sermon by telling the woman and the world that not the place of his abode and worship, but the good character of man—‘in spirit and in truth’—was the only true worship. And that is the only exclusive place whose metes and bounds God has set for any man to live, ‘in spirit and in truth.’

“How idle to talk of shutting off each race, as it were, into pens like pigs to fatten them. This penning process will neither fatten their bodies, enlighten their minds nor ennoble their souls. Can Mr. Graves tell us how much good the great Chinese wall has done for man? If he can, he can tell us how much good will come to us by putting the darkey out, and locking the door. Mr. Graves’ idea would reverse all the maxims of Christianity. It would be much better for Mr. Graves’ idea of the separation of antagonisms to be applied to different classes of occupations, of persons that are antagonistic. For instance, the dram-seller is antagonistic to all homes and boys and girls; therefore, put all dram-sellers and dram-shops on one island, and all the homes and boys and girls on another island, far, far away! Now there is your idea, Mr. Graves! Then, again, all horse thieves, bank breakers, train robbers, forgers, counterfeiters are antagonistic to honest men; so here, we will put them all in the District of Columbia and all the honest men in Ohio, and build a high wall between. All the bad boys we would put in a pen; and all us good boys, we will go to the park and have a picnic and laugh at the nincompoop bad boys whose destiny we have penned up! Ah, Mr. Graves could no more teach us this error than could he reverse the decree of Christ to let the wheat and tares grow together until harvest. The seclusion or isolation of an individual or a race is not the road that God has blazed out for the highest attainments. The Levite of the great parable drew his robes close about him and ‘passed by on the other side’—like Mr. Graves would have us do the Negro, except that instead of passing him by we would ‘put him behind us’—a mere difference of words. But the good Samaritan got down and nursed the dirty, wounded bleeding Jew; sacrificed his time and money to heal his wounds. Now that Levite must be Mr. Graves’ ideal Southerner! He says the Negro is an unwilling, blameless, unwholesome, unwelcome element. So was the robbed and bleeding Jew to the Levite; but did that excuse the Levite’s wrong? Ought the Levite to have put the groaning man ‘out of the way’ of his ‘imperial destiny’ by kicking him out of the road?

“Nay, verily. By the time that Mr. Graves gets all of the antagonistic races and all the antagonistic occupations and people of the world 
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