to rectify the
injury to the mental nature, should we neglect the reparation of the
moral condition of the race? We have suffered, my brethren, in the
whole domain of morals. We are still suffering as a race in this
regard. Take the sanctity of marriage, the facility of divorce, the
chastity of woman, the shame, modesty, and bashfulness of girlhood,
the abhorrence of illegitimacy, and there is no people in this land
who, in these regards, have received such deadly thrusts as this race
of ours. And these qualities are the grandest qualities of all
superior people.

This moral elevation should be the highest ambition of our people.
They make the greatest mistakes who tell you that money is the master
need of our race. They equally err who would fain fasten your
attention upon the acknowledged political difficulties which confront
us in the lawless sections of the land. I acknowledge both of these
grievances. But the one grand result of all my historic readings has
brought me to this single and distinct conviction that "by the soul
only the nations shall be free."

If I am not greatly at error, a mighty revolution is demanded of our
race in this country. The whole status of our condition is to be
transformed and elevated. The change which is demanded is a deeper one
than that of emancipation. That was a change of state or condition,
valuable and important indeed, but affecting mainly the outer
conditions of our people; and that is all that a civil status can do.
But outward condition does not necessarily touch the springs of life.
That requires other, nobler, more spiritual agencies. What we need is
a grand moral revolution, which shall touch and vivify the inner life
of a people, which shall give them dissatisfaction with ignoble
motives and sensual desires, which shall bring to them a resurrection
from inferior ideas and lowly ambitions; which shall shed illumination
through all the chambers of their souls, which shall lift them up to
lofty aspirations, which shall put them in the race for manly moral
superiority. A revolution of this kind is not a gift which can be
handed over by one people, and placed as a new deposit in the
constitution of another. Nor is it an acquisition to be gained by
storm, by excitement, or frantic and convulsive agitation, political
or religious. The revolution of which I speak must find its primal
elements in qualities, latent though they be, which reside in the
people who need this revolu