ideas, and children. If we have ideas and institutions to perpetuate and preserve, we shall entrust and communicate them to children rather than to those grown old in an opposite philosophy and experience. The new born mind is a blank, ready to receive impressions and to develop largely according to its surroundings. Early impressions may never be lost.

The minds of the American negro and the American Indian, considered as adults, were the only maiden minds among all those present in the early days of the colonies and the formative period of the republic. By maiden minds I mean blank minds; minds never before impressed with any phase of civil government; minds ready to receive new impressions; ineradicable impressions. The American negro has never known anything save those things distinctly American. We may have various opinions as to the desires of the forefathers of our republic, and we may differ on many other points, but it may be very safely asserted that we will all agree that, notwithstanding their desire for the preservation of religious freedom, it was, nevertheless, their aim and hope, and it is the aim and hope of their children and grandchildren to found and perpetuate a government immovably fixed upon Christian principles and philosophy. Has it ever occurred to our friend’s mind that the presence of the negro is threatening to that central thought? On the other hand, what of the Chinese?

As we have said, the negro came with his mind a blank, with no preconceived opinions as to forms of government, no attachment to a foreign flag or institutions. No flag, only the American flag; no home save America. The faith of the fathers is his faith. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Grant, his highest conceptions of human greatness. Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill the shrines of his patriotic pilgrimages. Christ his only refuge in religion. The Sunday of the forefathers his holy day, the Fourth of July his highest patriotic reverence. Christmas and Eastertide his hours of holy reflection. The machinations, seditions and conspiracies of the socialist, communist and anarchist his greatest aversion.

Religious freedom is the law of the land, and yet the most superficial observer is aware that our whole fabric, our whole structure is builded upon Christian philosophy. It is stronger than the written law; upon it is founded the whole law and order of society. It was the faith of the forefathers and upon its philosophy and reasoning was and is based every act, every constitutional engagement, every personal property and public right. These institutions could not have been evolved from minds immersed in 

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