s anti-republican and pernicious in all their
ramifications.

Perhaps no people ever had more advantages to dedicate and prepare
themselves for the ministry of Christ than the colored people of the
South. The religious "idea" has been so thoroughly worked that other
branches of study, other callings than the ministry, have paled into
insignificance. The Cross of Christ has been held up before the
colored youth as if the whole end and aim of life was to preach the
Gospel, as if the philosophy of heaven superseded in practical
importance the philosophy of life. The persistence with which this one
"idea" has been forced upon colored students has produced the reverse
of what was anticipated in a large number of cases, and very
naturally. It is a false theory to suppose all the people of any one
class to be specially fitted for only one branch of industry: for I
maintain that preaching has largely become a trade or profession, in
which the churches with large salaries have become prizes to be
contended for with almost as much zeal and partisanship as the prizes
in politics. This is true not only of colored ministers but white ones
as well. It is no disparagement of colored ministers to say that day
by day they grow more and more in favor of serving churches with fair
salaries than in carrying around the cross as itinerants, without any
special place to lay their heads when the storms blow and the rains
descend. In this they do but pattern after white clergymen, who do not
always set examples that angels would be justified in imitating.

Colored people are naturally sociable, and intensely religious in
their disposition. Their excellent social qualities make them the best
of companions. They are musical, humorous and generous to a fault.
Coupled with their strong religious bias, these attractive qualities
will in time lift them to the highest possible grade in our dwarfed
civilization, where the fittest does not always survive; the
drossiest, flimsiest, most selfish and superficial often occupying the
high places, social and political. But I have still higher aspirations
for my race. There is hope for any people who are social in
disposition, for this supposes the largest capacity for mutual
friendships, therefore of co-operation, out of which the highest
civilization is possible to be evolved; while a love of music and the
possession of musical and humorous talent is, undeniably, indicative
of genius and prospective cultur