relatively trifling importance, but, determined to reject it in this matter of races, are only imitating their brethren of old, and straining at gnats while swallowing camels with the greatest ease. To many persons the great doctrines of the Christian faith carry with them innate and irresistible proof of their divine 61origin, but the professional teachers of theology depend mainly upon supernatural interposition to convince the world of its truth, and yet by a strange and unaccountable perversity, some of them would reject it in the most important, or, at all events one of the most important instances in which it ever did or ever could occur. But will the sensible and really conscientious Christian priest or layman venture to persist in forcing this assumption, this palpable, demonstrable, unmistakable falsehood, that the single-race dogma is essential to the preservation of Christianity, upon the public? If he does, and if it is accepted by those who look upon him as a teacher, then it is certain that he will inflict infinite mischief on the cause of Christianity. To assume that all mankind have white skins, or straight hair, or any other specific feature of our own race, involves no greater absurdity, indeed, involves the exact absurdity, that the assumption of a single human species does. If it were assumed that we must stultify ourselves, and believe, or pretend to believe, that all mankind have white skins, or Christianity would be lost to the world, there is not a single man in this Republic that would not reject such an assumption with scorn and contempt. White and black are, of course, specialties, but no more so than (as will hereafter be shown) all the other things that constitute the negro being, and therefore the assumption put forward substantially and indeed exactly, is thus: We must believe that whites, Indians, Negroes, etc., have the same color, or the whole fabric of Christianity will be overthrown and lost to mankind!

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But enough—all Americans know—for they cannot avoid knowing—that negroes are negroes and specifically different from themselves; they know, moreover, that they differed just as widely when first brought to this continent, and all who understand the simplest laws of organization know that they must always remain thus different from ourselves, and therefore 62they know that they were made so by the act and will of the Almighty Creator, while when, or how, or why they are thus, is beyond the province of human enquiry, and of no manner of importance whatever.

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