man, we must
work out our common salvation. It is up to us,--it is up to us all!

The saving principle is as simple as the multiplication table or the
Golden Rule. Each man must do his best, each must be allowed to do his
best, and each must be helped to do his best. Opportunity for every one,
according to his capacity and his merit,--that is democracy. Help for
the weaker, as the strong is able to give it,--that is Christianity.
Start from this center, and the way opens out through each special
difficulty. The situation is less a puzzle for the intellect than a
challenge to the will and heart.

First of all, it is up to the black man himself. His freedom, won at
such cost, means only opportunity, and it is for him to improve the
opportunity. As he shows himself laborious, honest, chaste, loyal to his
family and to the community, so only can he win to his full manhood. The
decisive settlement of the whole matter is being worked out in cotton
fields and cabins, for the most part with an unconsciousness of the
ultimate issues that is at once pathetic and sublime,--by the upward
pressure of human need and aspiration, by family affection, by hunger
for higher things.

On the leaders of the negroes rests a great responsibility. Their ordeal
is severe, their possibilities are heroic. The hardship of a rigid race
severance acts cruelly on those whose intelligence and refinement fit
them for a companionship with the best of the whites, which they needs
must crave, which would be for the good of both races, but which is
withheld or yielded in scanty measure. Self-abnegation, patience, power
alike to wait and to do,--these are the price they are called to pay.
But the prize set before them is worth it all,--the deliverance of their
people, and the harmonizing of the long alienated races. They need to
beware of jealousies and rivalries of leadership such as have made
shipwreck of many a good cause. There is room and need for various
contributions. They have a common bond in that ideal which is the most
precious possession of the American negro. It is the old simple idea of
goodness, set in close relation to this age of productive activity. It
requires that a man be not only good but good for something, and sets
faithful and efficient service as the gateway to all advance.

But for the right adjustment of the working relations of the two races,
the heavier responsibility rests with the whites, because theirs is the
greater pow