er is
expected of us, if we are to judge from the evidences given us from
time to time by our white fellow citizens. For example, the white
undertakers in Augusta, Georgia, have given up to the colored
undertakers all their Negro patronage. The best white physicians do
not seek Negro patients. Although greed for "the almighty dollar"
keeps most white business men seeking Negro patronage, they do not, as
a rule, try to prevent Negroes from patronizing Negroes except by
striving to make it to their pecuniary advantage to patronize white
men. In a word, it is natural, they allow, for birds of a feather to
flock together. And this is true of the Jew, the German, the Irishman,
of all except the Negro. As it is, the average Negro chooses rather to
be discourteously and carelessly treated by a white professional or
business man, often of inferior ability, than to be properly treated
by a man of superior ability of his own race. Hence, to induce Negro
patronage of Negro enterprises and professional men, there must be
cultivation of the social sentiment of the Negro community by all
possible means.

From every view-point the pulpit is the strongest factor in the
cultivation of social sentiment. Some few preachers occasionally
"_talk_ on this line," but unfortunately for the influence of their
admonitions, they themselves purchase their groceries and drugs,
employ their physician and undertaker from members of another race. "A
house divided against itself cannot stand," like many another passage
and teaching from the "Book of God and the god of books," might as
applicably be preached to a large number of Negro preachers as to
their congregations. It is no "unholy compromise" of the gospel of
saving grace to teach that the "Man of Galilee" came first unto his
"own," and that to "follow after him" and his apostles in their
doctrine of "first to the Jew," our religion should exemplify Christ
by our acting on the principle, "first to the Negro." I would have
this doctrine promulgated persistently, earnestly, constantly, from
every Negro pulpit as the only hope of the Negro race, as such, and,
therefore, of the perpetuity and progress of their churches. Nor
should the publishing of the doctrine find place only in the
congregations of the laity, but it should be proclaimed in the
clerical conferences, conventions, associations, synods, assemblies,
etc., for I recognize it as a case of "Physician, heal thyself."

This cultivation of