s clench defiance
At the overpowering good:
And down the happy future runs a flood
Of prophesying light;
It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,
Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud
Of Brotherhood and Right."

That is my faith. The wrong may triumph for the moment, but in its
very triumph is its death-knell; it cannot always prevail. God has so
constituted the moral universe, has so planted in the human heart the
sense of right, that ultimately justice is sure to be done. "Ever the
Right comes uppermost," is no mere poetic fancy, but one of God's
great laws. In the light of that law, I am hopeful. I know that things
cannot go on as they are going on now, that the outrageous manner in
which we are at present treated cannot always continue. It is bound to
end sooner or later.

(4.) I am hopeful, because I have faith in the power of the religion
of the Lord Jesus Christ to conquer all prejudices, to break down all
walls of separation, and to weld together men of all races in one
great brotherhood. It is a religion that teaches the fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man, a religion in which there is neither Greek
nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free. And this religion is in
this land. There are, according to the statistics of the churches for
1898, excluding Christian Scientists, Jews and Latter Day Saints,
135,667 ministers in the United States, 187,075 churches, and
26,100,884 communicants in these churches. This would seem to be a
guarantee that every right belonging to the Negro would be secured to
him; that in the struggle which he is making in this country for
simple justice and fair play, for manhood recognition, for such
treatment as his humanity and citizenship entitle him, back of him
would be found these 135,667 ministers, 187,075 churches and
26,100,884 church members. But, alas, such is not the case. These
professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who came to seek and to
save the lost, who was the friend of publicans and sinners, whose
gospel was a gospel of love, and who was all the time reaching down
and seeking to befriend the lowly, those who were despised and who
were being trampled upon by others;--the Christ of whom it is written,
"And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove
after the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness shall he judge
the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth;" and who,
i