charge of Ebenezer M. E. Church in Jacksonville. He served
Ebenezer Church five years, during which time its membership
was doubled the last year, being marked by a great revival
which lasted two weeks and resulted in the conversion of 130
persons. His next charge was Trinity Church, St. Augustine,
where he served five years with success. He is now pastor of
Trinity M. E. Church, Fernandina. As a preacher he is
deliberate, convincing, persuasive and instructive. His
sermons are well constructed, choicely worded, rhetorically
polished, full of thought and eloquently delivered. He was
honored with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by Wiley
University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Marshall,
Texas, May 20, 1895.

The Christian pulpit has ever been acknowledged to be a great power
for good among all people. Coming as it does divinely commissioned and
bearing to man a divine message, it has a claim upon the attention and
the acceptation of mankind. Its claim to be heard is founded on the
fact that it has something to say--some truth to communicate about
God, His character, His purpose concerning man, His unbounded goodness
and infinite love--about man, his duty and his destiny, and the great
salvation offered to him. The Christian pulpit is peculiarly and
inseparably interwoven in the social life, moral deportment and
religious growth of the people. In its character it is to be the
representation of the highest standard of ethical deportment and the
best example of religious life. From it the people are to receive
their inspiration for that which is pure, exalted and ennobling. To
the Christian pulpit the people look for the loftiest ideals of
life. In this respect the Negro more than any other people has been
largely dependent upon the pulpit. Emerging as he did more than a
quarter of a century ago from a thraldom which fettered his body and
imprisoned his intellect and buried him in ignorance, it was the
Christian pulpit represented at that time by the good old fathers of
those dark and trying days--to whom the good and lamented Bishop
Haygood paid high compliment in one of his addresses--they it was who
saved their people from conditions which would have been vastly more
deplorable but for such moral and religious instruction as they were
able to impart. As a race we have moved an amazing distance from that
period. Schools, seminaries and universities have sp