place of all that is good and grand in a
race or nation. Wisdom and virtue are inseparable from a good home.
Hence, to make the comparison which my subject calls for, we must
inquire into the home and religious life of the present generation.
The young men from eighteen to twenty-one years of age who are, so to
speak, in embryo with respect to questions affecting the progress of
the race, are not included in the summary we make and should not be
considered directly, in measuring the moral status of the race. As to
the homes of the fathers forty years ago, very little can be said. But
late statistics show that there are over three hundred thousand homes
and farms owned by the Negroes in the United States, which indicates
that nearly two millions of the nine million of our people live in
their own homes. The figures are very significant when it is
remembered that the race started forty years ago, four million and a
half in number of individuals, with practically no homes. The property
value of the homes now owned is conservatively put at one billion
dollars--not a bad showing for a people who commenced forty years ago
at zero in wealth. But the accumulation of wealth does not always mean
that the owner is moral, yet the accumulation and maintenance of good
homes present a better argument in favor of the good moral inclination
of the people accumulating and maintaining these homes than can be
produced in words. These mean more than the mere ownership of a house
and lot, or a sixty acre farm; a respect for the first institution set
up by the Creator is thereby shown and that in that institution (the
family) is one to love and honor; and that there an altar is to be
erected around which all are to kneel and worship God; they mean that
morality, the foundation of all true greatness, is to be enthroned
there. The establishment and maintenance of so many Christian homes
among our people has brought forward a demand which is a barometer of
the moral changes, and shows conclusively that the race is improving
morally. This demand is for the right kind of men as preachers and
teachers. The time was when a man who could read and write, no matter
what his character, could find a place to preach and teach among our
people. This does not obtain now so much as before, and the people are
demanding that their teachers and spiritual advisers be men and women
whose lives and characters are living epistles of virtue. If proof of
this point we