," he said, "is the Good Samaritan,
loving to bestow its aid upon the poorest and most despised, the most
severely wounded races of our country." The sermon, a score of years
ago, told us that our neighbor was the Negro, just then made free. So
said President Washburn, "If you can point out to this organization
any race that needs its assistance, whether colored or white, there is
the legitimate field of this Association."

It would seem that a law so emphatically taught by Jesus Christ as the
common brotherhood of man, and so familiar to the world, would long
ago have been accepted and adopted in the practice of Christian
nations, especially by a Christian Republic within its own borders.
But, instead of that, it is the hardest of all laws for us to learn
and the most difficult of all to put in operation. Our policy toward
the general colored races in this land has been one of cold-hearted
and cruel selfishness. As ex-Senator Brace has said, speaking in
behalf of his own people, "From the red race was taken their lands,
from the yellow their labor, from the black their persons. The red
race was gradually driven toward a setting sun; the yellow race, the
rabble demanded to be driven from the country; the black man was a
slave in chains, with no rights which the Constitution recognized."

These unjust prejudices are by no means altogether a thing of the
past. They are not as violent as they once were, thanks to the
influence {160} of this Association, but they still exist. "Niggers,"
are still ordered out of Southern churches. Many a professed Christian
still wants his Indian "dead." This work has all along been compelled
to fight its way against suspicion, bigotry and hatred; it must do so
still, because it recognizes man as man, whether his skin be white or
black, red or yellow; and, in taking this radical ground, it is
interpreting to the world the benevolent spirit of the Saviour, and is
preparing the way for that universal reign of love on earth which He
came to establish. Such a work as this is the salvation of our
Christianity. Without it, one of the chief evidences for Christianity
would be taken away, and the spirit of it would die. Standing before a
congregation of white men, Negroes and Indians, with a Chinamen or two
to make the tale complete, President Mark Hopkins last May dedicated
the new chapel at Hampton to the worship of Almighty God. He voiced
the sentiment of this whole Association when he said, "He